J Street strongly opposes the House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Brian Mast’s recent memo, instructing committee staff to exclusively refer to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria.”

Taken alongside Trump’s announcement that the White House would take a position on West Bank annexation in the coming weeks, as well as other senior Republican lawmakers’ recent endorsement of the rightwing push for Israeli sovereignty over much of the territory, Mast’s move represents a dangerous step towards legitimizing what would be a profoundly illegal and destabilizing act in the occupied territory.

While the Jewish people undeniably have a longstanding historical and cultural connection to the land West of the Jordan River, the Palestinian people also have a longstanding connection, as well as a legitimate claim to the same territory under international law. By instructing the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s staffers to exclusively refer to the territory as Judea and Samaria, Rep. Mast is implicitly denying the Palestinians’ legitimate connection to the land, and laying the ideological groundwork for future unilateral annexation with the US’s implicit support.

The Israeli pro-settlement and pro-annexation far-right pays close attention to the rhetoric and policies of their American counterparts. The recent wave of senior Republican endorsements of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank will undoubtedly embolden Israeli extremists to push ahead with their efforts to alter the facts on the ground in the West Bank, in order to further undermine the possibility of a mutually agreed resolution that sees Israel living side by side with a Palestinian state in peace and security.

The vast majority of American Jews recognize that a secure, democratic and Jewish state of Israel requires progress toward a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet, the increased ideological convergence between senior GOP lawmakers and Netanyahu’s extremist coalition partners takes Israel one step closer to West Bank annexation – a move that would jeopardize its security, democratic character and Jewish identity.

Israeli annexation of the West Bank would also be detrimental to American regional interests, by threatening to reignite the war in Gaza, preventing a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, and further entrenching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The White House must, therefore, resist its GOP allies’ calls to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.