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by Algemeiner Staff
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett attends a cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, February 27, 2022. Abir Sultan/Pool via REUTERS
A storm of controversy erupted on the Israeli right on Sunday after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett used the term “West Bank” rather than the traditional Jewish name “Judea and Samaria.”
Bennett used the term during a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in the lead up to a joint summit in Israel’s Negev region between the US, Israel, and several Arab states.
The response to Bennett’s use of the term “West Bank” was immediate and intense, Israeli news site N12 reported.
Yigal Dilmoni, head of the umbrella settler organization the Yesha Council, said, “A statement like this is another degradation in values by the government. It adds to [the government’s] construction freeze and turning [its] back on the settlements. A government like this must be sent home.”
MK Amichai Chikli, a member of Bennett’s own Yamina party, also slammed the prime minister, saying, “It’s not surprising that he who established a leftist government with the Meretz [party] and the Islamic Movement in the end adopts the terminology of [leftist organization] Peace Now.”
MK Ofir Sofer of the Religious Zionist party charged Bennett with “erasing his ideology” and said his use of the term “West Bank” is “very dangerous for the future of Judea and Samaria.”
The prime minister’s office said in a statement that he usually uses the term “Judea and Samaria” in both Hebrew and English, and that the remark was “accidental” and should carry “no special significance.”
