Israel will re-evaluate terminology used in news broadcasts to refer to territories captured in the Six-Day War, according to an Israeli Arab leader.
Dr. Ahmed Tibi said the minister in charge of a public body that oversees state-supported television and radio has promised to look into his complaints about their use of the names “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the West Bank.
That terminology, which is used in the Bible, has long been preferred by the right-wing Likud bloc, which believes that the area is an inseparable part of the biblical Land of Israel. The governing Labor Party and its allied Meretz bloc, on the other hand, favor territorial compromise.
Tibi said that Education Minister Shulamit Aloni, who heads Meretz, has pledged to ask the Israel Broadcasting Authority to re-examine the names by which news reports refer to the territories, which came under Israeli control in 1967.
A spokesman of the ministry has denied instructions are given to radio and television broadcasters on terminology to be used for the territories.
Tibi is chairman of the association of academics in the Israeli Arab town of Taiba and is reported to have close ties with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
He said he had written to Aloni on the issue and received a reply from an adviser to the minister, who also confirmed that the official term used by Israel at the peace talks is “the territories.”
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