What is the West Bank?

There are so many terms when it comes to Israel and the Middle East that I think are foreign to a lot of people, and one of them that was confusing to me for a long time was this term West Bank. And we hear about it in the international media all the time. In the West Bank. In the West Bank. Israel is trying to build in the West Bank. The Palestinians in the West Bank. What on earth is the West Bank?

It’s actually pretty simple. There’s a river that separates Israel and the country of Jordan, and that river is the Jordan River. The West Bank is an area of land on the western side of the Jordan River. Yes. It’s really just that simple. It’s the West Bank of the Jordan River, and it’s an area of land that Jordan once controlled after 1949 until 1967 when Israel took that area back in the Six Day War. That’s what the West Bank is. Many Jewish people today call it Judea and Samaria, because this is where much of the Bible history happened – the biblical Heartland. West Bank, Judea, and Samaria – call it what you’d like – but it’s just the area on the western side of the Jordan River.