The name "West Bank" was a name created by Jordan after the War of Independence in 1948 when Arab armies overran Judea and Samaria.
Then in the course of the Six-Days war Israel reconquered this area, and the beaten Jordanians started to call it "West Bank" meaning the West bank of the river Jordan. Despite the fact that Judea and Samaria have been known by these names for unbroken centuries, and were registered as such on official documents and maps, by international institutions and in authoritative reference books right up to about 1950, the phrase "West Bank" since the end of the 60s has stuck, and is used to the near total exclusion of any other, although for thousands years this area was called Judea and Samaria.
The mountains of Judea are first named in the Book of Joshua, in the account of the conquering of Canaan by the Israelites during the creation of the Land of Israel. From that time to the present, more than 3,000 years, the name Judea has been consistently used to describe the territory from Jerusalem south along the Judean mountain ridge line, extending east from the mountains down to the Dead Sea.
The hill country north and west of Jerusalem has been known as Samaria since the days of King Jeroboam, first king of the breakaway ten northern tribes of Israel after the death of King Solomon.
Judea and Samaria have been known by these names for unbroken centuries, and were registered as such on official documents and maps, by international institutions and in authoritative reference books right up to about 1950. When the correct names became a problem for palestinian arabs trying to make their newly-minted claim on the land, it somehow became "politically correct" to use "West Bank" instead of the historically accurate names Judea and Samaria.
Some examples of reference works using the names Judea and Samaria:
A map published by the US State Department designating the Middle East's "Military Situation" on July 18, 1948 calls the "Arab held" area north of Jerusalem "Samaria".
In A Survey of Palestine prepared by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in December 1945 and January 1946 the authors used the titles "Judea" and "Samaria" as a matter of course when referring to what later became the "West Bank".
In United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 adopted November 29, 1947, the world body referred to Judea and Samaria by those historical names.
Every edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, up to the latest (1994) writes extensively concerning the areas politically called the West Bank, and calls them by their historically accurate names: Samaria and Judea. The fact that the "West Bank" is not mentioned once in the 1954 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica indicates just how recently this title entered popular usage, and just how quickly, and deeply, it has taken root.
It had been always the West Bank of the River Jordan but never been the East side of Israel eveyone knows
The Jordanians where the ones who gave it the name. They said it's the West bank cause it is the bank of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea that is to the West. That's all.
West Bank of Jordan River, West Bank of Dead Sea
Because it's west of the Jordan River. The west bank of the Jordan river, so to speak.
It is the West bank of the Jordan River, once owned by Jordan, it used to be called Trans-Jordan.
When Brittan created Jordan they gave them all the land East of the Dead Sea and called them Trans-Jordan. In 1948 Jordan invaded Israel and took control of Israeli land on the West bank, in 1967 Israel took it back.
West bank of the river Jordan, east bank is Jordan.
Because it’s officially Jordanian territory and is located in the west side of Jordan
this is a term started when jordan owned that part of "palestine"... the palestinians there were jordanian and they lived on the west bank of the jordan river... and it was called jordan NOT palestine.
