Israel Opens New Tender for 1,234 E1 Settlement Homes as Condemnation Widens Skip to main content

Israel Opens New Tender for 1,234 E1 Settlement Homes as Condemnation Widens

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By Tanha Sagar | Published on

Israel's housing ministry opened bidding on 18 August 2026 for 1,234 settler homes in the E1 area east of Jerusalem — a fast-tracked, separate tender that bypassed an earlier one covering the full project, which has sat unopened for eight months. The move has drawn one of the broadest waves of international criticism the Israeli-Palestinian dispute has produced this year, with a Western joint statement that grew from seven governments to more than a dozen plus the European Commission within 48 hours, a joint rejection by eight Arab and Muslim states, and a rebuke from the UN Secretary-General.

The new tender covers roughly a third of the approximately 3,401 housing units approved for the E1 corridor, a roughly 12-square-kilometre tract of land between East Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma'ale Adumim. According to the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, rather than opening the existing tender for the full project, the state issued and immediately opened for bidding a new, separate tender for just part of it, with bids due on 19 October — one week before Israel's 27 October general election.


What Happened, and What the Tender Actually Is

The story of this week's tender cannot be understood without the one that preceded it. Israel's Civil Administration approved the full, roughly 3,401-unit E1 plan in August 2025. The Israel Land Authority then published a tender (No. 460/2025) for all of those units on 9–10 December 2025, but according to Human Rights Watch and Peace Now, its opening for bids was postponed repeatedly over the following months amid a pending legal challenge. On 18 August 2026, rather than finally opening that stalled tender, the Ministry of Construction and Housing published and opened for immediate bidding a new, separate tender covering only 1,234 of the 3,401 units — about a third of the total.

What is confirmed: the 18 August tender is real, covers 1,234 units in seven compounds, and closes on 19 October 2026. The Israeli government has not disputed these mechanics; Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar's public response instead argued that the underlying policy decision was taken in 2025, telling critics in a social media statement that there had been no new decision regarding development in E1.

What is contested is why a second, narrower tender was created instead of simply opening the original one. Peace Now, Ir Amim and Bimkom — the three organisations that petitioned against the project in the Jerusalem District Court — said in a joint statement that they had been told by the State Attorney's Office on 19 July that no E1 tenders were expected for two to three months and that they would be notified in advance of any change; they said the government issued the new tender without warning them. The government has not published a public rebuttal of that specific account.

A December 2025 tender for all 3,401 E1 units was postponed repeatedly and never opened. On 18 August 2026, the government issued a separate, new tender for 1,234 of those units and opened it immediately for bidding, without the advance notice to petitioners that rights groups say officials had promised.

Three Decades in the Making

The idea of linking Ma'ale Adumim to Jerusalem through the E1 corridor dates to 1991 under Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and was formally advanced by Yitzhak Rabin in 1994, even as Rabin pursued the Oslo peace process. Construction never proceeded, chiefly because of sustained objections from successive US administrations, Democratic and Republican alike. Ariel Sharon revived preparatory work in 2004 — an access road and a police headquarters were built — but froze residential construction in 2005 under pressure from President George W. Bush's administration. Benjamin Netanyahu briefly revived the plan in 2012 in response to the UN General Assembly's recognition of Palestine as a non-member observer state, only to shelve it again.

The freeze held until August 2025, when Israel's Civil Administration approved the full E1 plan days after the UK, France and other governments announced their intention to recognise a Palestinian state — a sequence Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described as burying the idea of a Palestinian state. Prime Minister Netanyahu signed a development agreement covering Ma'ale Adumim and E1 the following month, telling supporters at the settlement that there would be no Palestinian state. Peace Now separately reported that 2025 closed with a record 9,629 settlement housing units tendered across the West Bank, more than 6,700 of them in Ma'ale Adumim alone, under a government-municipality framework agreement.

Why Now: The Political Drivers

Analysts point to several converging factors. The Trump administration, in office since January 2025, has taken a markedly more accommodating posture toward settlement activity than its predecessors; a State Department spokesperson told Axios this week that Washington does not support Israeli annexation of the West Bank, but the administration has not moved to block the tender itself.

Domestic politics is the factor most frequently cited by Israeli critics of the plan. Israel's general election is set for 27 October 2026, and the tender's 19 October bid deadline falls one week before the vote. Peace Now said the government was attempting to sign construction contracts before the election so that a future government would find it harder to cancel the project — a characterisation offered by the organisation, not an established fact, though it is consistent with the timeline the government itself has set.

The Positions of the Major Actors

Israel's Government

Foreign Minister Sa'ar rejected the international criticism as one-sided, invoking the 1917 Balfour Declaration to argue that Jewish people have the same right to live throughout what he called the Land of Israel that British citizens have to live anywhere in the United Kingdom. He said no new decision on E1 had been taken and accused the UK government of a systematic pattern of blaming Israel alone. Mr Smotrich, who has championed the project since 2025, has repeatedly cast it as ending any realistic prospect of Palestinian statehood. Ma'ale Adumim's mayor, Guy Yifrach, has framed the housing units chiefly in terms of the city's own growth, saying the city has not opened a new neighbourhood in about twenty years.

Western Governments

A joint statement from the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada and Norway was published on 20 August, calling the tender unacceptable and warning it would drive a wedge through the West Bank. Over the following two days the statement's published signatories grew to include Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and Belgium, and then Spain, Austria and Greece, alongside the European Commission — bringing the total to roughly fifteen governments and the EU executive by 22 August. UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband separately summoned Israel's chargé d'affaires and called the tender an unacceptable and destructive act, and said London would set out further measures, potentially including targeted sanctions against those involved in settlement expansion, in the coming weeks — a pledge, not yet an adopted sanctions package. The joint statement also warned private companies against bidding, citing legal and reputational risk.

Arab and Muslim States

In a joint statement on 21 August, the foreign ministers of Qatar, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Jordan categorically rejected the E1 plan, describing it as a dangerous escalation that threatens the viability of an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital. The ministers called for accountability measures, including possible sanctions against those responsible for settlement expansion, and noted that the project challenges President Trump's own stated opposition to West Bank annexation. Spain and Sweden separately voiced similar positions around the same time, though as part of the Western joint statement described above rather than the eight-state Arab-Muslim statement.

The United Nations

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said through his spokesperson that he was deeply alarmed by the new tenders and called on Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice's July 2024 advisory opinion, which found Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful, and with UN Security Council Resolution 2334 of 2016, which found Israeli settlements to have no legal validity. These are two distinct instruments — a non-binding advisory opinion and a binding Council resolution — cited together by the Secretary-General's office, which separately warned that E1 would sever the northern and southern West Bank.

The Palestinian Leadership and Affected Communities

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed the international statements and urged Israel to cancel the tender, citing Resolution 2334. Israel's Civil Administration and UN humanitarian monitors have both referred to 18 Palestinian communities, most of them Bedouin, living within or adjacent to the area affected by the E1 plan, including Khan al-Ahmar; estimates of the total population involved vary across sources — Human Rights Watch cites roughly 250 people in Khan al-Ahmar alone, while academic and UN humanitarian research over the past decade has put figures for the wider group of communities anywhere from about 2,300 to several thousand, depending on the year and the boundary used. This article does not adopt a single figure given that inconsistency.

Why This Story Matters

E1 is widely treated as different from other settlement disputes because of its location. Because the corridor connects Ma'ale Adumim to Jerusalem, planners and Palestinian officials alike have long argued that developing it would complete a belt of Israeli-controlled territory separating the northern West Bank from Bethlehem and Hebron in the south — an assessment shared, with different conclusions, by both supporters and opponents of the project. That is why the plan drew opposition from US administrations of both parties for three decades, and why its advance now, alongside a friendlier Washington, is being read by many governments as a marker of how far West Bank policy has shifted.

The dispute also sits inside a wider deterioration in the West Bank. UN monitors have reported that settler violence reached record levels in 2026; the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded 38 incidents of Israeli settlers injuring Palestinians or damaging property in a single week in early August, according to UPI's reporting of the agency's figures, part of a year that UN officials have separately said produced more than 1,430 recorded attacks since January.

What Happens Next

Three procedural threads will determine the tender's near-term fate. First, bidding on the new 1,234-unit tender remains open until 19 October 2026; award of contracts would follow evaluation of submitted bids, a process that in past Israeli settlement tenders has taken additional months. Second, the original, larger tender for all 3,401 units (No. 460/2025) remains formally on the books but unopened, and it is not clear from public reporting whether the government intends to activate it later or has effectively shelved it in favour of smaller, staged tenders. Third, the Jerusalem District Court case brought by Ir Amim, Peace Now, Bimkom and Palestinian petitioners continues; the court had ordered the state to file a detailed response by 1 September 2026, a deadline that falls before the new tender closes.

Editor's note: This article will be updated to reflect the Israeli State Attorney's Office's formal response, due before the Jerusalem District Court on 1 September 2026. Until that filing is public, the petitioners' account of the notice they say they were promised — described above — remains their characterisation of events, not an independently confirmed fact.

Implications and Risks

In the near term, the tender is likely to sharpen friction between Israel and Western governments without producing an immediate change of course. The UK's pledge of measures to come, rather than measures already adopted, and the European Union's history of sanctioning individual violent settlers without suspending its broader agreement with Israel, both suggest that any punitive response will be incremental rather than sweeping.

Over the medium term, the Jerusalem District Court case could still affect the project's trajectory, particularly if petitioners can show the government broke a specific commitment to notify them before issuing a new tender. Palestinian advocates caution, however, that legal and diplomatic pressure has not previously halted the plan's advance through three prior freeze periods, and that verbal condemnation alone carries limited weight absent enforceable measures such as trade restrictions.

The longer-term risk cited most often by officials and analysts is the practical foreclosure of a viable two-state arrangement if construction proceeds on the ground, a point where supporters and opponents of the project agree on the physical stakes even as they draw opposite conclusions about the desired outcome.

Scenarios Ahead

Most likely: bidding on the 1,234-unit tender proceeds through October while Western governments issue further statements and narrow measures against individuals; construction does not begin before the 27 October election, and the district court process continues without halting the tender.

Alternative scenario: the pending litigation, a weak field of bidders deterred by international warnings, or renewed delay tactics push contract award well into 2027 — repeating the pattern of the stalled December 2025 tender even without a formal Israeli reversal.

Higher-impact scenario: construction visibly begins before or shortly after the election, prompting a more significant Western response — coordinated sanctions or trade measures — and hardening Arab and Muslim states' positions at the UN.

Recommendations for Relevant Authorities

For Israeli authorities and the courts: the unresolved question over whether petitioners were given the promised advance notice is a discrete, checkable procedural issue that the Jerusalem District Court's forthcoming ruling, due after the state's 1 September filing, is positioned to resolve without requiring any change in the underlying policy position.

For Western governments: the gap between the UK's pledge of future measures and any measures actually adopted suggests that publishing concrete guidance to companies — rather than statements of principle alone — would give existing warnings more practical effect before the 19 October bid deadline.

For Arab and Muslim states and the UN: translating the joint statement's call for accountability measures into a specific, votable proposal, such as a draft Security Council resolution, would test international resolve in a way that repeated condemnation over three prior freeze-and-revive cycles has not.

For all parties: the presence of 18 Palestinian communities within or near the affected area, independent of the wider political dispute, argues for immediate, verifiable protection measures for those residents regardless of how the tender process unfolds.

Conclusion

The E1 dispute has now outlasted seven Israeli prime ministerial terms and several rounds of American diplomacy, and this week's response — spanning Washington's muted position, a rapidly expanding Western statement, a joint Arab-Muslim rejection and UN alarm — shows how central the project remains to international thinking about Palestinian statehood. What distinguishes this episode from the freezes of 2005, 2012 and 2022 is the government's apparent decision to bypass its own stalled December 2025 tender in favour of a faster, partial one timed against the election calendar. Whether the Jerusalem District Court's 1 September filing, the mounting diplomatic pressure, or the 19 October bid deadline proves decisive is likely to become clear only in the coming weeks.

Sources

This article draws on primary statements from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and its statement on the Israeli ambassador's summons, the UN Secretary-General's office via UN News, the Israel Land Authority's tender record as reported by Peace Now and Ir Amim, and reporting from Human Rights Watch, Al Jazeera, the BBC, The Times of Israel, the Irish Times, Reuters via Arab News, Euronews, Middle East Monitor, UPI, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Xinhua, and background from Britannica and the Israel Policy Forum. Where sources disagreed on a figure — including community population estimates in the E1 area — this article notes the range rather than adopting a single unverified number.

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