What has determined the success of this part of the world?

Everything is due to the civilizations that appeared in Greece.
Civilizations in the Middle East were doomed to be located in deserts and not to evolve socially. Greece evolved socially. Greece is more important than Rome as the genesis of your question.
Alexander could have conquered Europe and taken the place of Rome, but he decided to invade the ancient world, with his military might, he did what he had to do or the Persians would have conquered Europe like the Ottomans did.
Rome learned from Greece and followed the legacy of knowledge, the Germans from Rome, and the mixture of both plus a Jewish moral sense, ultimately created the Western world. Christianity was the first NATO in the Western world.

da jooz

The jews, we are nothing without them

Education and other public services + private ownership. Good mixture of those. That's why America is a shithole nowadays because they have only private ownership.

biology

Greeks, Romans and a bit of decency

For starters, not being black already puts you ahead of the whole africa in terms of intelligence and drive. Also mediterranian commerce has always been a huge incentive for merchants to seek new markets and products which helped to advance technology faster

independent/protected commerce

Hard work and trust

/thread

wealth from us. the most ancient civilization in the world , cradle of civilization etc etc