The Occupation Puts All E1 Units on the Tender Track Ahead of the Israeli Elections
5/10/2026 – Union for Justice Foundation
The Union for Justice Foundation said that the so-called Israeli Land Authority published, on September 7, 2026, an update to Tender No. 460/2025, reducing the number of units from 3,401 to 2,167 units. It set October 25 as the date for opening the tender to bidders and December 21, 2026, as the final deadline for submitting bids, thereby completing the placement of all housing units in the E1 colonial project within the tender process.
According to data from the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, these developments do not mean a retreat from the project, but rather its division into two complementary tenders. On August 18, 2026, the occupation authorities opened Tender No. 186/2026 for the construction of 1,234 units, with the deadline for receiving bids set for October 19. With the addition of the remaining tender for 2,167 units, all 3,401 units finally approved in August 2025 are now covered by implementation tenders, after the original tender published in December 2025 had grouped them into a single package.
The Union for Justice Foundation explained that, according to the aforementioned data, the scheduling of the deadlines places the procedures for putting the project out to tender in the period preceding the Israeli elections scheduled for October 27. The deadline for submitting bids for the first tender falls eight days before the elections, while the second tender opens two days before them. Thus, the occupation government reaches election day with the entire project having been placed on the marketing track: one part has completed the receipt of bids, while another has been opened to competing bidders, increasing the political and administrative costs associated with any subsequent government seeking to freeze the project.
The Foundation stressed that opening the tenders does not mean that construction has actually begun or that the project has become legally irreversible, as the stages of selecting winning bidders, signing development and lease-right agreements, issuing permits, and implementing infrastructure remain. However, moving from approval of the plan to putting all of its units out for competition represents the removal of a major implementation barrier and brings the project closer to the stage of imposing physical facts on the ground.
The Foundation said that accelerating the procedures for putting the units in the E1 project out to tender, and the synchronization of the tender deadlines with the period preceding the Israeli elections, reflect the project’s transition from the planning and approval stage to a more advanced stage of implementation procedures, amid the continuation of measures related to the project and their implications for Palestinian geographic contiguity and the status of Jerusalem and its surroundings.
The danger of these developments lies in the fact that they move E1 from a plan that had remained frozen for decades to a government project whose planning, financial, and implementation obstacles are being dismantled one after another. The project seeks to consolidate the colonial connection between Jerusalem and the “Ma’ale Adumim” settlement, sever Palestinian geographic contiguity between the northern and southern West Bank, and isolate Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, making the acceleration of the tenders part of a broader process aimed at imposing annexation and reshaping the Palestinian geography.
Data from the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, based on the official records of the occupation’s Land Authority, indicate that from the beginning of 2026 until September 17, 2026, the occupation authorities had issued 17 real-estate tenders in West Bank settlements, including nine tenders with a residential component that, according to their announced figures, included 3,524 units. After excluding a canceled tender for the construction of 342 units in the “Ariel” settlement, with the same units reissued under an alternative tender, the non-duplicated net total becomes eight tenders comprising 3,182 units. The total includes 350 units for protected housing in “Ma’ale Adumim” and 194 units within a mixed-use project in “Ganei Modi’in.”
Important note: This total does not include E1 Tender No. 460/2025, concerning 2,167 units, because its initial publication date was December 10, 2025, despite its deadlines being updated during 2026 and its opening being scheduled for October 25. If it is added on the basis that it was a tender reactivated during 2026, the total number of units placed on the tender track rises to 5,349 units.
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