No more West Bank: GOP staffers instructed to use "Judea and Samaria"

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) instructed Republican committee staff to refer to Judea and Samaria as such rather than as the internationally recognized name of West Bank, according to a report published by Axios today (Wednesday).

The term "West Bank" originates from before 1967 and after the 1948 War of Independence, when the Kingdom of Transjordan occupied the Biblical areas of Judea and Samaria during 1948 and held onto them until the Six Day War. The name "West Bank" was meant to be in contrast to Jordan today, which lay on the "East Bank" of the Jordan River.

Even after Israel took the region from Jordan in 1967, the international community continued to use the term West Bank, both due to regular usage and the refusal by countries around the world to recognize Israeli control of the area, even though Jordan's annexation of that territory was also never recognized internationally by most countries.

Israel, meantime, has alternated between calling it the West Bank in Hebrew and Judea and Samaria (or in their acronym, Yosh) - their original names as given during the late First Temple and Second Temple era - in popular and government discourse.

While Israel has never seriously tried to annex pre-1967 Jordanian territory outside the city of Jerusalem, Trump's election has led to increased calls to do so from the hawkish and pro-settlement parts of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition.

Settlers living in Judea and Samaria have also established a lobby in Washington DC to work with like-minded people in Congress and the Senate to advance pro-settlement agendas, including using the less hostile term West Bank as a matter of course.

Current discussions within the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government are focused on what to do about the Gaza Strip and its population, but the question of what to do with Judea and Samaria is likely to also be up for discussion soon enough.