Should Jews regard Samaritans as Kutim or as our fellow Israelites?

The origins of the Samaritans has been debated between Jews & Samaritans for thousands of years but modern research seems to support the Samaritan narrative.

Estimation of genetic distances between the Samaritans and seven Jewish and three non-Jewish populations from Israel, as well as populations from Africa, Pakistan, Turkey, and Europe, revealed that the Samaritans were closely related to Cohanim. This result supports the position of the Samaritans that they are descendants from the tribes of Israel dating to before the Assyrian exile in 722-720 BCE.

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the traditional hypothesis, that the Samaritans were transported into the Levant by the Assyrians and have no Jewish heritage, is largely incorrect. Rather, these Samaritan lineages are remnants of those few Jews who did not go into exile when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 721 BC. Those who remained in the Levant may have take non-Jewish wives, which would account for the genetic admixture on the female side. But according to the authors the Y-chromosome clearly shows that the Samaritans and the Jews share common ancestry dating to at least 2,500 years ago.

The mitochondrial DNA results, which show maternal history (i.e. your mother’s mother’s mother, etc.), reveal no major difference between the Samaritans, Jews, or Palestinians in the Levant who were also sampled. These three groups have relatively similar maternal genetic histories.

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the principal components analysis suggested a common ancestry of Samaritan and Jewish patrilineages. Most of the former may be traced back to a common ancestor in what is today identified as the paternally inherited Israelite high priesthood (Cohanim) with a common ancestor projected to the time of the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel.” The mitochondrial lineages of Samaritans were closest to Iraqi Jewish.

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The study finds statistical evidence that the male lineages represented by the Y-chromosomes present in today’s Samaritans are very similar to those of Cohanim, supporting the view that Samaritans have ancient roots in the Israelite population.

The Samaritan Y chromosomes are significantly closer to those of the Jewish groups than to those of Palestinians.

The male lineages of the Samaritans, on the other hand, seem to have considerable affinity with those of the five non-Ethiopian Jewish populations examined here. These results are in accordance with expectations based on the endogamous and patrilineal marriage customs of the Samaritans and provide support for an ancient genetic relationship between Samaritans and Israelites.

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Here is how Israel views them: “For censuses, Israeli law treats Samaritans as a distinct religious community, but the Chief Rabbinate of Israel defines them as ethnically Jewish (i.e., Israelite). Rabbinic literature, however, rejected the Samaritans’ Halakhic Jewishness unless the community renounced Mount Gerizim as the historical Israelite holy site.”

Edit: In the 90s some orthodox communities in Israel tried to remove them from the Law of Return because they view them as ‘Kutim’ but the Samaritans went to the Israeli Supreme Court and proved they are Israelites

However, this administrative status has been subject to pressure from the Orthodox Jews, who have been well-represented for some years in the Israeli government and the Great Rabbinate of Israel, who pejoratively call them Kûtîm, a Talmudic appellation of origin designating the descendants of the polytheistic Assyrians.

The 1990s marked a turning point in Samaritan political history: in 1992, under pressure from the Shass political party, Samaritans residing in the Palestinian Territories were excluded from the Law of Return due to an amendment promulgated in 1970. Following this decision, the Samaritan committees brought a lawsuit against the Israeli Ministry of the Interior through the Supreme Court.

Represented by a lawyer, Michael Corinaldi, the Samaritan committees presented the studies of a historian, Menahem Mor, and a biblical scholar, Shemaryahu Talmon, who both validated the thesis that they were descendants of the Hebrew tribes of the North whose population was not exiled from the Holy Land. For the Samaritans, the stake was to have their Israelite ancestry, and therefore their autochthony, scientifically and legally recognized.

Their mobilization was a success: in 1994, not only did they recover the right to benefit from the law of return but those from Mount Gerizim obtained Israeli citizenship in 1996

EDIT 2: There is also a Samaritan redditor who did a 23&Me test and had 94% Levantine DNA and only 5% Mesopotamian DNA. The Kutim origin theory is clearly not accurate

Personally I view them as our brothers/sisters and as Israelites. What are your thoughts on them?