Israel advances tenders for E1 West Bank settlement homes

Israel has opened bidding for more than 1,200 homes in the occupied West Bank’s E1 area, advancing a long-contested settlement project that Palestinians and Israeli rights groups say would fracture the territory and undermine prospects for a Palestinian state.

The tender issued by Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing covers 1,234 housing units, part of a broader plan for 3,401 homes approved by the Israeli government last August. The E1 area spans about 12 sq km, or 4.6 sq miles, between East Jerusalem and the large settlement of Maale Adumim.

Plans to build in E1 have drawn international condemnation for decades. Opponents say construction there would effectively divide the West Bank between north and south, isolate East Jerusalem and block the development of a contiguous Palestinian urban area linking Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

The bidding deadline is Oct. 19, days before Israel’s general election scheduled for Oct. 27. Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog that has challenged the plans in court, said the timing appeared designed to make the project harder to reverse.

“The government is trying to sign contracts with contractors before the elections so that it will be much harder for the next government to cancel the construction,” Peace Now said. The group said even partial construction would “fundamentally” alter “the geographic and strategic character of the area by severing the northern West Bank from the south and isolating East Jerusalem.”

“Building in E1 will ruin the possibility of reaching an end to the conflict and a peace arrangement based on two states,” it said.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the tender. Its Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a body affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization, said Tuesday that advancing the project would confine Palestinians in the West Bank to “disconnected enclaves surrounded by settlements.” The commission described the tender as part of a broader geopolitical effort to reshape the area between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley.

Al Jazeera reported that its correspondent Nida Ibrahim, speaking from Hizma in the West Bank, said realization of the E1 project would be the “last nail in the coffin” of the two-state solution. “The E1 project has been already delayed several times by the Israeli government, but now we see it happening on the ground,” she said. She added that the “ultimate goal for the Israelis is to get Palestinians to leave.”

Israel captured the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. It annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, a move not recognized by most of the international community. Palestinians seek the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza for a future state, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Israeli settlements and outposts in occupied territory are illegal under international law. Israel has built about 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967, alongside an estimated 3.3 million Palestinians. Settlement expansion has accelerated since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the head of a right-wing, pro-settler coalition, and since the Gaza war began after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Under international pressure, successive Israeli governments had held off for decades on E1 construction. The current government gave the go-ahead last year, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an ultranationalist settler, said at the time that the idea of a Palestinian state was “being erased.”

Israeli rights group Ir Amim said the tender covers one of two approved construction plans for E1 and warned that even “partial implementation would create irreversible facts on the ground.” Peace Now said the “Netanyahu-Smotrich government” was “trying to bury the two-state solution” and “tie the hands of the next government.”

Palestinian activist Jamal Juma of the Stop the Wall campaign told the BBC the project would devastate Palestinian communities. “It is destruction of the communities, it’s destruction of families… this is a disaster,” he said. He said more than 40 Bedouin communities would be affected and would have to be evicted.