Israel opens up tenders for controversial West Bank settlement project

Israel Launches Bidding for Controversial West Bank Housing Scheme Ahead of Election

Ninoda.com – The Israeli housing ministry has released a tender covering 1,234 units out of the 3,401 dwellings approved last August for construction in the E1 corridor, a stretch of roughly 12 square kilometres (4.6 square miles) running between East Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement. Bidders must submit proposals by 19 October — barely days before the country’s general election on 27 October — a timing that critics say is designed to lock in contracts that any successor administration would struggle to unwind.

Strategic Calculus Behind the Build

The government’s stated aim is to foreclose any prospect of a Palestinian state. A year ago, ministers gave explicit approval for development in E1, describing the move as a means to “erase” the concept of Palestinian statehood. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an ultranationalist and settler himself, made that framing explicit when the plans were first unveiled.

Opponents argue the corridor would bisect the West Bank, severing its northern half from the south and cutting off the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian urban zone linking Ramallah, East Jerusalem, and Bethlehem. In effect, the project would isolate East Jerusalem from the rest of the territory.

Settlement Context

Since Israel seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War, it has erected approximately 160 settlements home to around 700,000 Jewish residents. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them in the same territory. East Jerusalem was formally annexed in 1980, a step the vast majority of the international community has never recognised. Settlements themselves are regarded as illegal under international law.

Expansion accelerated markedly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 leading a right-wing, pro-settler coalition, and following the Gaza war ignited by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. For decades, successive governments had deferred E1 construction under international pressure, with allies and Palestinian leaders warning it would deliver a decisive blow to two-state aspirations.

Voices of Opposition

Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog that has litigated against the plans in court, warned that the government’s pre-election contracting strategy makes cancellation by a future cabinet far more difficult.

“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.”

The organisation added that even partial implementation would “fundamentally” reshape “the geographic and strategic character of the area by severing the northern West Bank from the south and isolating East Jerusalem,” and that building in E1 would “ruin the possibility of reaching an end to the conflict and a peace arrangement based on two states.”

Jamal Juma, a Jerusalem-based Palestinian activist with the Stop the Wall campaign, told the BBC the project would devastate local communities and families.

“It is destruction of the communities, it’s destruction of families… this is a disaster.”

He noted that more than 40 Bedouin communities stand to be displaced. Bedouin residents of the area, together with Israeli peace organisations, have mounted a court challenge to the scheme, though the tender has proceeded regardless.