Were Judea and Samaria – also known by most western media audiences as the “West Bank” – ever Palestinian territory? Did Israel capture this territory from the Palestinians? Is the West Bank currently designated Palestinian territory? NPR has repeatedly misled its audience to believe all three answers to these questions are “yes,” when this is simply not the case.
Twice in the last three weeks on State of the World, NPR described the West Bank as the “Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank” (July 15) and as “Palestinian territory between Israel and Jordan that Israel’s military has occupied since 1967” (Aug. 5). These descriptions are factually false.
Despite CAMERA’s repeated requests for corrections, the fallacy remains on NPR’s podcasts and website. In the past, CAMERA successfully prompted corrections for similar language (referring to the West Bank as “Palestinian territory”), including in The New York Times, Voice of America, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.
NPR’s language suggests the West Bank was Palestinian land that Israel swooped in to occupy at some point. This is not the case.
Prior to 1948, the British administered the territory of Judea and Samaria. The Kingdom of Jordan occupied it following the 1948-1949 War of Independence and formally annexed it in 1950. In fact, it was Jordan who referred to the area as the West Bank, as historical records prior to 1948 show the area referred to as Judea and Samaria. During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured the “West Bank.”
Because no internationally recognized Palestinian state held legal title to the territory prior to 1967, it is both technically incorrect and nonsensical to refer to it as Palestinian territory. Just because Palestinians lived somewhere does not mean they held legal title or established a sovereign nation there. Therefore, on Aug. 5, when Greg Dixon said that “Israeli Jewish settlers [have been] taking more and more of the West Bank away from Palestinians,” this is a false statement, as the West Bank has an undefined status and is not Palestinian territory. (CAMERA also asked NPR to correct this error but did not receive a response.)
Under the 1995 bilateral Oslo Accords, Area A of the West Bank is under full Palestinian Authority (PA) civil and security control, and Area B is under PA civil control, with shared security control between Israel and the PA. On Aug. 5, Emily Feng incorrectly stated that Area B is “land under Palestinian civil administration but Israel’s security control.” (CAMERA also requested, to no avail, that NPR correct this error to include the fact that security control in Area B is shared with the PA.) Area C, under the Accords, is under full Israeli control. Approximately 99% of Palestinians in the West Bank live in Areas A and B.
Prejudging any part of the “West Bank” as Israeli or Palestinian is contrary to the widely supported, international understanding that exact borders will be determined in final status negotiations.
Widely supported and understood, that is, unless you are NPR.