A familiar charge runs through most of the commentary on this conflict in the Middle East: that Israel’s presence in the “West Bank,” settlers and all, is a central obstacle to peace with the Palestinians. Even those who stop short of calling it the only obstacle treat it as one of the larger ones. The reasoning is tidy. Palestinians homesteaded land in the West Bank and Gaza, the argument runs, and yet Israel controls most of that land, along with most of the water beneath it. On this telling, the whole arrangement is a plain violation of Palestinian property rights and self-rule. It is theft, pure and simple.

We think this is mistaken, root and branch. Begin with two matters of vocabulary, because the words here do real work. The territory in question is Judea and Samaria, not the “West Bank,” a coinage of fairly recent vintage. And the people who live there are routinely labeled “settlers,” as though they were colonists who had seized land from prior occupants. The truth runs in precisely the opposite direction.