US Senator Tom Cotton has introduced a Senate bill that seeks to eliminate the federal use of the term “West Bank” and instead implement the use of “Judea and Samaria”, claiming the terminology aligns with Israel’s historical and biblical claims to the territory.
Judea and Samaria is the Israeli term for the occupied West Bank.
The proposed legislation mirrors a House bill introduced earlier this year by Representatives Claudia Tenney, Randy Weber, and Anthony D’Esposito.
If enacted, the measure would remove all references to “West Bank” from US government documents, replacing them with the biblical name.
“The Jewish people’s legal and historic rights to Judea and Samaria go 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.
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The move comes amid growing international criticism of Israel’s policies in the occupied territories. In July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of the West Bank illegal under international law, challenging the legitimacy of Israeli settlements, which now house nearly 700,000 Israeli settlers.
The UN has documented a sharp increase in violence, with nearly 1,000 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since 2022 due to Israeli military raids and settler attacks.
Proponents of the bill argue it solidifies US support for Israel – and its settlement activity – a stance long championed by Republican donors such as Miriam Adelson, who has provided significant financial backing to GOP campaigns.
In February, Secretary of State Antony Blinken emphasised that expanding settlements in the West Bank undermines Israel’s security and contradicts US policy, which traditionally supports a two-state solution. But little has been done by the US to stop Israeli settlement building aside from a handful of sanctions against individual settlers.
The origins of this legislative effort can be traced back to earlier Republican initiatives.
Representative Tenney introduced the “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,” which sought to update existing US legislation, such as the Foreign Assistance Act, to replace “West Bank” with “Judea and Samaria” in February.
“The Israeli people have an undeniable and indisputable historical and legal claim over Judea and Samaria. At this critical moment in history, the United States must reaffirm this,” Tenney said.
Israel’s claims to the West Bank, captured during the Six-Day War in 1967, have been a flashpoint for decades.
While the Oslo Accords of the 1990s granted Palestinians limited self-governance in parts of the territory, the situation has deteriorated significantly.
The recent surge in violence, after the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel and the subsequent war on Gaza, has intensified tensions, with human rights groups deeming 2023 the deadliest year for Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank.
Cotton’s bill reflects a broader Republican agenda to unconditionally support Israel while disregarding Palestinian self-determination.
As Cotton prepares to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under the incoming Trump administration, the legislation signals a significant shift in US Middle East policy.
A growing wave
In September, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that designated products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank as originating from “Israel”. This bill was also sponsored by Tenney, who was behind the House bill on renaming the occupied West Bank.
This bill, titled the “Anti-BDS Labeling Act,” solidified a Trump-era policy that critics argue undermines Palestinians’ UN-recognised territorial claims and champions Israel’s annexation efforts while directly targeting the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, sending a clear message against those advocating for Palestinian human rights.
The policy, introduced by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2020, was viewed by some as pushing the boundaries further than Israel’s own efforts. Now, it stands on the cusp of becoming permanent US law.
The bill passed with a vote of 231 to 189 and received support from 16 Democrats, including some of the party’s most pro-Israel members. It mandates that products from the occupied West Bank and Gaza no longer be labelled together but separately, effectively erasing the recognition of their unified identity. Products would read either “West Bank” or “Gaza”, rather than “West Bank and Gaza”.
The proposal further stipulates that products from the majority of the occupied West Bank will be labelled as “Product of Israel” or “Made in Israel.”
Critics warned that the legislation complicates efforts to support Palestinian rights by making it harder to boycott products from illegal Israeli settlements.
Opponents, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), condemned the bill as a step toward ethnic cleansing, saying, “A ‘yes’ vote for this bill is erasing the existence of Palestinians”.
“Yeah, that’s right – Palestinians also have a right to exist,” she added.
Tlaib, the sole Palestinian-American member of Congress, highlighted the troubling trend of conservative lawmakers inciting hostility toward Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians. She pointed to a recent hearing where Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) echoed racist sentiments, telling Arab-American expert Maya Berry that she ought to “hide [her] head in a bag”.
“The provisions of this bill, Mr Speaker, carry hateful and discriminatory implications,” Tlaib said. “We must unite against it and vote no.”
