Last month, when President Trump welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his first foreign head of state, the president was asked about his position on Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. His response was, “People do like the idea, but we haven’t taken a position on it yet.”
While the Trump administration faces a wide range of pressing concerns, few carry as high a risk as mishandling the question of sovereignty. The implications span three critical spheres: the political and historical, the security and national defense, and the biblical and spiritual.
Historically, Judea and Samaria have been referred to as the West Bank since the 1947 partition plan and the subsequent Jordanian annexation of this biblical heartland. It was only in the 1967 war that Israel reclaimed the area. Calling it the West Bank reduces it to a mere sliver along the western side of the Jordan River, yet this region is the cradle of Israel’s heritage, where an estimated 80% of the events recorded in the Bible took place.
During my visit to Israel this week, I toured several pivotal biblical sites. One was the remains of Joshua’s altar on Mount Ebal, as described in Joshua 8. Standing atop one of the highest mountains in Samaria, this site marks a turning point: the moment when the Israelites, having crossed the Jordan into the land promised to Abraham centuries prior, recited the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 30. That passage includes God’s assurance that if they were ever exiled but returned to Him, “the LORD your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations.”
I also visited Shiloh, where the tabernacle remained for 369 years before King Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem. Today, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is often in the headlines, but these three sites — Mount Ebal, Shiloh, and Jerusalem — are all located in territory frequently mislabeled as the West Bank. Not only are they essential to Jewish history, but they are also central to Israel’s modern security and identity.
Yet this land remains in limbo due to the persistent insistence on a two-state solution, in which advocates would carve out another Arab state from the very land, Judea, that gave the Israelites their identity as Jews. The Secretary General of the United Nations reiterated this two-state proposal this week, maintaining that peace depends on dividing the territory. Such a claim, however, reveals the U.N. leader is either willfully deceptive or dangerously deceived.
After the events of October 7, 2023, it should be abundantly clear that a two-state solution is anything but a guarantee of stability. Judea and Samaria comprise a land mass roughly 24 times larger than Gaza, positioned squarely in the heart of Israel. Surrendering such strategic depth would not pave a road to peace; it would chart a course for prolonged conflict and insecurity.
With these factors in mind, the United States should support Israel’s rightful claim to sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, the historical land of the Jewish people. Failing to do so risks entrenching a flawed status quo that has already cost countless lives and sown perpetual instability.
