Samlingstråd för israeliska krigsbrott, verkliga och påstådda

The term “Judea and Samaria” is a reference to the biblical regions of Judaea and Samaria. It is also the name given by the Israeli government to the West Bank, an area west of the Jordan River whose borders were defined by the 1949 armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan at the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The territory, which had been apportioned for Arab rule before the war and was annexed by Jordan after the war, was then called the “West Bank” to distinguish it from the area of Jordan on the “East Bank” of the Jordan River. As a result of the Six-Day War of June 1967, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) took control of the West Bank and established a military administration over it, which remains in place today. It was through a military order (no. 187) from the new military administration that in December 1967 the term “Judea and Samaria” was first applied to the West Bank, reflecting the territory’s significance in Jewish history. The use of “Judea and Samaria” is associated with the right wing in Israeli politics, which rejects the call for a two-state solution that aims to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By contrast, the term “West Bank” has much wider recognition, having been enshrined in international treaties, such as the Oslo Accords between the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

The ancient name "Judea" itself was not used as an official administrative name by the Ottomans. It was largely an irrelevant term to the ruling Turks, though it was still used by some European and Christian communities to describe the historical and biblical landscape.