Judea and Samaria are Israel's official names for the territory previously called the "West Bank" when under Jordanian occupation before 1967, when Israel reclaimed its ancestral homeland in a defensive war initiated by the Hashemite Kingdom.

 

Judea and Samaria is today one of Israel's administrative districts, closely corresponding to Area C (the medium blue area in the map at right), and excluding the area of East Jerusalem.

 

The district covers a portion of the territory designated by the biblical names Judea and Samaria. Samaria corresponds to part of the ancient Kingdom of Israel, and Judea to part of the Kingdom of Judah, also known respectively as the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms.

 

After the fall of the Northern Kingdom (720 BCE), Israel was renamed Samaria (Shomron), and during the Hellenistic and Roman periods the name Judah was hellenized to Judea.