A few geographical problems in the world are so magnificently overworked as the one called the “West Bank.”

Every week, the international community assembles to discuss it. The United Nations discusses it. European governments discuss it. Human-rights organizations discuss it. Newspapers discuss it. Diplomats discuss it. The Vatican, which one might reasonably expect to remember the Bible, discusses it.

There are resolutions about it, condemnations about it, conferences about it, and occasionally, when everyone has exhausted the vocabulary of condemnation, strongly worded statements about it.

Settlements must stop. Settlers must stop. Settlement expansion must stop. The occupation must end.

The “West Bank” must become a Palestinian state.

And naturally, Israel must somehow be made to understand that the land on which its ancient history was written is now, by the miracle of international terminology, somewhere else. Perhaps, therefore, it is time for a modest proposal.

I suggest that we abolish the West Bank.

Not the land, of course. That would be rather difficult. I mean the peculiar international invention by which Judea and Samaria have been made to disappear beneath a label. The proposal is modest because it requires no armies, no peace conference, no Security Council resolution and no 47-page European Union document.

We need only stop pretending that a name has the power to erase a history.

The “West Bank” is, strictly speaking, a geographical description: the land west of the Jordan River. The name became internationally entrenched during the period of Jordanian rule after 1948, when Jordan annexed the territory and distinguished it from the kingdom’s territory east of the river.

The phrase is now spoken with such solemnity that one might imagine Moses received the tablets and was immediately handed a map labelled “West Bank.”

Joshua did not conquer the West Bank. David did not rule the West Bank. The prophets did not preach in the West Bank. Jesus was not born in the West Bank.

Those names are not Zionist inventions........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)