PA official: “Judea and Samaria” are “new classification”

Tulkarem District Governor and Fatah Revolutionary Council member Abdallah Kmeil: "The Israelis are conducting attacks everywhere for political reasons related to their way of thinking, their beliefs, and their ideology as a state that denies the original inhabitants of this land. They treat it, according to the new classifications and what they recently legislated, as the area of 'Judea and Samaria.'"

[Official PA TV, June 21, 2025]

Judea and Samaria are the central regions of the land of Israel. The names were used for over 3,000 years in writing and in maps from Biblical times through 1949. During the 18 years of Jordan's illegal occupation, it renamed the land "The West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan." Since Israel liberated the lands in the Six Day War in 1967 and Jordan renounced its claim, the 3,000-year-old names Judea and Samaria are the correct names.

The Palestinian Arabs have no history prior to the modern period.