A few things about the politics, and some facts

One of the hardest thing about being in Ramallah was the discussions about the presence of the IDF, and Israel in general, in the “West Bank” and in any of the land, the ‘occupation’ of Palestine as a whole. I am not nearly right wing enough to suggest that Israel has done nothing wrong, and that the entire situation is entirely right and ethical, but the reality is that, as Mayor Bloomberg said, when your cities and citizens are under attack, “there is NO overreaction to terrorism.” When you are already acting outside of ethical means, ethical standards can hardly be practically or successfully applied.

Anyway, some facts.
The names of places such as Nablus, Galilee, even Palestine, came from the Romans as they conquered the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judea, approximately 2000 years ago, and this is historical fact. “Palestine” was derived from “Phillistine,” the legendary mortal enemy of the defeated kingdoms, and so this name was used by the Romans to further destroy their conquest, not just physically but in name and in spirit.

Regarding the “West Bank”. What does this name actually refer to? The west bank of the Jordan river. In this light, it is easy to believe the truth—That Jordan, during the 1960s when they were in control of the region, rechristened the area as the “West Bank,” to further validate their attempt to annex the region. Before this time period, every map—those of the UN, etc—had this regions labeled as Judea and Samaria. Why did the entire world acquiesce to the idea of the name change? In the time period in happened, Israel was for the first time no longer always the small, weak David versus the Goliath; name such as Judea for a region is hard to ignore in connection to the Jewish people. The West Bank, however, seems much more neutral, and yet much less likely to be an authentic name in a land where Hebrew and Arabic are the native tongues. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but that doesn’t really suggest that the name is culturally unimportant or irrelevant.