US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, March 11, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Julia Nikhinson

US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) has introduced legislation that would ban the federal government from using the term “West Bank” and instead use the terminology “Judea and Samaria.”

On Thursday, Cotton introduced the “Retiring the Egregious Confusion Over the Genuine Name of Israel’s Zone of Influence by Necessitating Government-use of Judea and Samaria (RECOGNIZING Judea and Samaria) Act.” The senator argued that the legislation would “align US policy language with the geographical and cultural significance of the region.”

“The Jewish people’s legal and historic rights to Judea and Samaria goes back thousands of years. The US should stop using the politically charged term West Bank to refer to the biblical heartland of Israel,” Cotton said in a statement. 

US Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) — a stalwart ally of Israel, like Cotton — issued a statement in support of the bill, arguing that the official usage of Judea and Samaria is necessary in “defending the integrity of the Jewish state.”

“The Israeli people have an undeniable and indisputable historical and legal claim over Judea and Samaria, and at this critical moment in history, the United States must reaffirm this,” Tenney said. “This bill reaffirms Israel’s rightful claim to its territory. I remain committed to defending the integrity of the Jewish state and fully supporting Israel’s sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.”

US President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has vowed to use the words Judea and Samaria in lieu of the West Bank. 

“I can’t say something I don’t believe. As you well know, I’ve never been willing to use the term ‘West Bank.’ There is no such thing. I speak of Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee told Israeli media outlet Arutz Sheva in an interview. “I tell people there is no ‘occupation.’ It is a land that is ‘occupied’ by the people who have had a rightful deed to the place for 3,500 years, since the time of Abraham.”

If the US federal government were to adopt the official usage of Judea and Samaria instead of the West Bank, it would be aligning itself with the terminology preferred by Israel. Such a move could signal a shift in US policy closer to the Jewish state and in favor of further expansion of Jewish communities in the territory.

Critics have argued that such a shift in language could inflame tensions in the Middle East, complicating the possibility of reaching a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, in which the Jewish state secured its independence, the Kingdom of Jordan promulgated the term “West Bank” to describe the territory it controlled west of the Jordan River. Since Israel captured the area in the Six-Day War in 1967, it has governed them as Judea and Samaria.