They are recorded so in the Bible, the New Testament and other historical documents.
EOZ assists:
From the Report by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of PALESTINE AND TRANS-JORDAN for the year 1938:
Jerusalem [is] situated in the midst of the hills of Judea, and the principal towns are Haifa, with its modern harbour, in the north at the entrance to the plain of Esdraelon; Jaffa, a second port which lies some 40 miles west- north-west of Jerusalem; Tel Aviv, which is contiguous to Jaffa; and Nablus, the ancient Sichem, in the hills of Samaria.From UN document A/364, September 1947:
Apart from these inland plains in the north and portions of the desert area in the south, the interior of the country is very mountainous with the hills of Judea and Samaria in the centre and the hills of Galilee in the north....From UN A/RES/181(II) 29 November 1947:
The proposed Arab State will include Western Galilee, the hill country of Samaria and Judea with the exclusion of the City of Jerusalem, and the coastal plain from Isdud to the Egyptian frontier....
The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River at the Wadi Malih south-east of Beisan and runs due west to meet the Beisan-Jericho road and then follows the western side of that road in a north-westerly direction to the junction of the boundaries of the sub-districts of Beisan, Nablus, and Jenin. From that point it follows the Nablus-Jenin sub-district boundary westwards for a distance of about three kilometres and then turns north-westwards, passing to the east of the built-up areas of the villages of Jalbun and Faqqu'a, to the boundary of the sub-districts of Jenin and Beisan at a point north-east of Nuris.....These are all official documents in the UN archives.
In 1998, the PLO expressed its anger at the use of this ancient - and accurate - term:
It is shocking that the Foreign Minister, while speaking of the agreement, uses a phrase like "Judea and Samaria" to describe the West Bank, in flagrant violation of the Wye River Memorandum and other existing agreements between the two sides. The use of such a term is indicative of an expansionist ideology and policies.The UN didn't start capitalizing "West Bank" as a place name until at least 1968.
Daled Amos helps.
You can peruse Hansard and find gems:
1) 1934
Mr. MAGNAY
May I ask whether the conditions in Samaria are worse than they are at Escomb in the County of Durham?
§ Mr. FOOT
I am not in a position to say; I have not visited the County of Durham.
2) 1982
Mr Ivan Lawrence (and others)
Written Answers — January 27
asked the Lord Privy Seal on what basis Her Majesty's Government have decided that the Israeli occupation of Judaea and Samaria is illegal; and what advice he has received from legal authorities
The answer came later:
Mr. Hurd
In the Government's view, Israeli settlements in the territories which historically formed part of Judaea and Samaria are illegal by virtue of the fact that their establishment is inconsistent with Israel's status as an occupying power and is contrary to certain provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a party.
The Government recognised Jordanian sovereignty over these territories in 1950. Jordan has made clear that she maintains her claim to sovereignty over the West Bank until such time as the Palestinians are able to decide its future for themselves.
3) A quite revealing legal interpretation in 1982 by Latham:
I do not believe that the area that is described in United Nations General Assembly resolution 181 of 29 November 1947 as "Judaea and Samaria" belongs automatically to Israel or to Jordan. I consider that its status is undetermined. The last legal owner was the British mandatory power, which itself acted with dubious legality when Sir Winston Churchill, after the Cairo conference of 1921, put the Emir Faisal on the throne of Iraq and made his brother the Emir Abdullah the independent ruler of a newly invented country of Transjordan, contrary to the decisions of the San Remo conference.
This was also wholly contrary to the spirit of the MacMahon correspondence with Sherif Husain and was in accordance with the cynical diplomacy of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement. Only two countries have ever recognised the Jordanian annexation between 1950 and 1967, one of which was Britain. That annexation was no more legal in terms of treaties than would Mr. Begin's annexation of the same territories be now. It was based solely on the rights of conquest by a belligerent Power. It is not even clear whether Jordan still maintains a territorial claim over what it calls the West Bank or whether this claim was vacated in favour of the PLO at the Rabat conference of 1974.
4) 1923
Since the last debate on this subject-in this House, on March 27, much has occurred in Palestine...It has been repeatedly said in this House that you will never be able to persuade the Arab and Christian populations of Palestine, who form the large and preponderating majority of the people of that country, to assent to a Zionist system of Government...
...An Election has recently taken place in Palestine. The Arab Congress rejected that Election, and although prolonged to nine months, with every effort that is coupled with the prolongation of an Election in all countries to induce people to vote, in the three districts of Jaffa, Samaria, and the southern district, almost the entire Arab and Christian population refused to take any part, in the other two districts only a partial number took part. The reason why these people refused was quite clear.
(Incidentally, he later misquotes the same way Avishai Margalit misquoted the Mandate decision based on the Balfour Declaration, so:
It is true that subsequent to that pledge an undertaking was given in a Declaration to endeavour to establish a Zionist Home in Palestine, but that was conditional on such policy not interfering in any way with the "civil and religious rights of the Arab and Christian community.")
5) 1994
I understand that the Question before the House is: "whether the Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories violate Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention"...I assume that my noble friend is referring to the last paragraph of Article 49. It states: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies"...I remind the House of Article 2. It states that, "the present convention shall apply to … armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties". The convention applies, "to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party"." I therefore ask the House to consider this question: which is the high contracting party whose territory is occupied? In other words, which state has sovereign title to the West Bank?
In 1967 Jordan was in occupation. It is generally accepted that after its annexation of the territories, Jordan had no sovereignty in international law. Its presence in Judaea and Samaria was only given de jure recognition by two countries out of the whole international community. Therefore, if one is dealing with points of law, as my noble friend's Question seeks, it seems clear that the West Bank, at present occupied by Israel, does not belong to any other state, and the convention therefore does not apply. The answer to the first and dominant part of my noble friend's Question is therefore no.
I shall raise another matter if I have time. The last legal sovereignty over the territories was that of the League of Nations mandate of 1922. It can be argued that its provisions still hold legal weight. The mandate stipulated that the area was to be part of the Jewish homeland, and that Jewish settlement there was to be encouraged.
That seems to have an echo in the Levy Report. And Baroness Chalker said further on in the debate:
The final status of these territories has to be addressed in the final stage of the peace process negotiations.
6) There was this idiot in 2003:
...let us ask ourselves why religious people involve themselves at all in what their opponents describe as terrorism: whether they are Roman Catholic or Protestant fanatics in Northern Ireland; Islamic extremists from Saudi Arabia joining the ranks of Al'Qaeda; or extreme Zionists preaching the expulsion of Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, from Samaria and Judea.
7) 1919
In the plan for the offensive which commenced on September 19, the 21st Corps (Lieut.-General Bulfin) were to attack and break through the Turkish defences on the coastal plain and open a way for the Cavalry. The latter were to advance along the coast and cross the hills of Samaria into the plain of Esdraelon, thus intercepting the Turkish line of retreat.
8) Discussing the proposed Partition in 1937, note the surmised result:
The proportion of Arabs to Jews in the Jewish State, apart from the mandated towns, is planned to be 225 to 259. There, and in the mandated towns, the same difficulties and problems will arise as in the present mandated territory, but aggravated by the existence of a strong Arab State in the hills of Judea and Samaria, jealously watching the fate of the Arab minorities in the Jewish State, and with a regular army to support its protest instead of bands of hastily, clandestinely and lightly-armed rioters. That, it seems to me, is a dangerous position for the Jewish State to occupy...The White Paper goes on: "Above all, fear and suspicion would be replaced by a sense of confidence and security, and both peoples would obtain, in the words of the Commission, 'the inestimable boon of peace'." What peace?
What prospects of peace do the declarations of all the representatives of Arab opinion, with the exception, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, of the Emir Abdullah hold out? The Secretary of State referred to the declaration of the Prime Minister of Iraq, but he did not read it out. The Prime Minister of Iraq says: "Any person venturing to agree to act as head of such a State"—" that is, an Arab State such as the Government propose to set up— "would be regarded as an outcast throughout the Arab world and would incur the wrath of Moslems all over the East. I declare, both as the head of an Arab Government and as a private citizen, that I should always oppose any individual's right to stab the Arab race in the heart in order to secure the rulership of the proposed new State."
9) and anti-apartheid semantics in 1982:
What Britain and the Europeans must do requires true even-handedness and a sensitive awareness that in approaching either side one is dealing with suspicious minds, fine-tuned ears and outraged self-respect. To the Israeli consensus the mere mention of a Palestinian State, whether by means of a Freudian slip or pious wish, is just as obnoxious as are the terms Judea and Samaria or a roll-call of Jewish West Bank settlements to a forum of Arab nationalists. Yet one day, when the dust has settled, perhaps the right of Palestinian Arabs to political self expression and the right of Jews to settle anywhere within historic Palestine must and will be reconciled.
10) Last but perhaps the best - note that "Palestine" is not mentioned by Charles Cumming Bruce but Samaria is part of Syria, from 1841:
...is it not curious, to say the least of it, that we should then have fought, and paid, and struggled, to wrest from Turkey her Grecian provinces, lying at the very gates of Constantinople, and from which she drew the best sailors of her fleets and that we should now fight and pay and struggle to restore to her, her Syrian Provinces, situated much more remotely, and from which I will undertake to say, from a pretty accurate knowledge of the various little independent nations which inhabit them, the Druses, the Maronites, the Ansaeri, the Moutoualis, the Bedouins of Samaria, differing as they do in habits, religion, and origin—Turkey will derive little else than the necessity of contending with an ever-renewing insurrection. But the classic recollections of Greece spoke perhaps more powerfully than the hallowed memories of Jerusalem.
One more, as it seems to define J&S as inherently Jewish, from 1990:
...the second new development, which has far more serious long-term consequences for the region, is the recent. current and anticipated influx of so many Soviet Jews into Israel. Following the opening of the floodgates in October 1989, 120,000 have arrived in the first year...therefore it is understandable that Palestinian refugees fear that such an influx will prove to be at their expense in terms of jobs, housing and the resources that Israel currently makes available in the occupied territories.
In discussions that I had with four Israeli Ministers —it was my privilege to meet four Ministers in one day —including Mr. Sharon, the Housing Minister, it was suggested that there were no grounds for such fears, and that, in any case, Israel has assured the United States of America, as its major donor, that there will be no settlement of Soviet Jews in what is termed Judaea and Sumaria [sic] —the west bank.
I fear that I have found clear evidence that Soviet Jews are settling beyond the green line in east Jerusalem, and on the west bank.
^
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