You're Wrong and Unhelpful Yourself, Mr. Ambassador

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro spoke to a crowded ASEAN Auditorium at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts this week.

Among the things Shapiro said was this about "expanding settlements in the West Bank Judea and Samaria"

“It’s unhelpful both because it changes the map over time … but also because of the political impact and the way it suggests to Palestinians that decisions are being made before they are at the negotiating table.”

You see, Mr. Ambassador, calling the territory of regions of the historic Land of Israel as the "West Bank", a geo-political term of obfuscation created in April 1950 when the illegal occupier of Judea and Samaria, Jordan's King Abdallah I annexed that land to his kingdom, is unhelpful, an interference with the neogtiaons for a peaceful settlement, discriminatory to Jewish rights and claims as well as being unauthentic as even the United Nations 1947 Partition Plan used the terms Judea and Samaria to delineate the borders of the future two states (a compromise plan rejected by the Arabs, incidentally, and due to their subsequent aggression, the map changed).

Using "West Bank" has quite a negative impact.

It affords the Arab side an ability to claim, before they are at the negotiating table, that they have a right to all of that territory.

But I suspect you intended that.

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