ABSTRACT
During the past three decades the Middle East has witnessed some major existential developments, the effects of which will continue to influence its countries and its peoples for generations to come. These included the toppling of the monarchical regime in Iran and the rise of radical and militant religious movements in the region, the two Gulf wars, Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in November 1977, the Lebanese crisis and the dislodging of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanon, the end of the Middle East's role as a centre of Cold War tension and the subsequent change in the strategic significance of several of its countries to the former East-West protagonists, the reduced power of the oil-producing countries due to the drop in world oil prices, the increased burdens of military expenditure and the mounting international indebtedness of Middle Eastern countries, a relative drop in funds from international sources of finance, and finally the widening gap between the have and have not countries in the region. Of all these developments, Sadat's 1977 Jerusalem visit has probably exerted the greatest impact on the course of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
