Trap · reasoning move
◆ Which name?
Sounds like: “It's called [our name], not [their name]”
Place names used as proof of ownership: Judea and Samaria or the West Bank, Jerusalem or al-Quds, the Temple Mount or al-Aqsa. Choosing one name is taken to settle whose land it is.
Signs
a name offered as an argument ('it's called Judea, so it's Jewish'; 'it's al-Quds, not Jerusalem'); outrage at the other side's name; one layer of a place's history treated as the only one.
Questions to ask
How old is each name, and who used it when? Does the other side's name also carry real history? Is the name doing the work that evidence should do?
Example
'It's Judea and Samaria, not the West Bank. The name proves it's Jewish land.'
The mirror
'Al-Quds is an Arab city. There was never a Temple.' Yet its Arabic name, Bayt al-Maqdis, means the Temple.
One land, layered names.
Jerusalem is Yerushalayim in Hebrew and al-Quds in Arabic. Al-Quds is short for Bayt al-Maqdis, 'the Holy House', the Arabic rendering of the Hebrew Beit HaMikdash, the Jewish Temple. The Arabic name of the city remembers the Temple that some deny existed. Hebron is Hevron in Hebrew and al-Khalil in Arabic: 'the Friend', meaning Abraham, the Friend of God, whose tomb both peoples revere there. Bethlehem is Beit Lechem ('house of bread') and Bayt Lahm ('house of meat'). Nablus comes from the Roman Flavia Neapolis, built next to biblical Shechem. Many Arabic village names preserve the Hebrew or Aramaic originals: Beitin is Bethel, Anata is Anathoth, al-Jib is Gibeon. The names are evidence of continuity for both peoples at once.
The names each side uses, and when they began.
'Judea and Samaria' are the biblical names, used in Israeli official language for the West Bank since 1967. 'West Bank' dates from Jordan's rule: the west bank of the Jordan kingdom, after the 1950 annexation. Neither name is neutral: one stresses the Jewish past, the other a Jordanian-era administrative unit. 'The Temple Mount' and 'the Haram al-Sharif' / 'al-Aqsa' name the same platform (see 'Which al-Aqsa?' on the timeline). Renaming has gone both ways. Rome renamed Judea 'Syria Palaestina'. After 1948 the Negev Names Committee and its successors gave Hebrew names to places across Israel, often reviving biblical ones and replacing Arabic names on the map. The Arab world had earlier replaced Greek, Latin and Hebrew names with Arabic ones.
Traps here:◆ Which territory?◆ Which Palestine?
'The Holy Land': a name all three faiths share.
The Hebrew Bible calls it admat ha-kodesh, 'the holy land', once (Zechariah 2:16; 2:12 in English Bibles). Christians called it Terra Sancta, the Holy Land of pilgrimage. The Qur'an has Moses tell the Israelites to 'enter the Holy Land (al-ard al-muqaddasa) which God has assigned to you' (5:21). It may be the one name for the land that none of the three traditions considers the other side's.
Why it works on us
- Names carry memory: a name that goes back three thousand years feels like a title deed.
- Renaming has really been used to erase: the Romans renamed Judea, and after 1948 Israel's naming committees replaced Arabic names on the map.
- Using the other side's name can feel like conceding the argument.