The Attorney General’s Office has instructed authorities to postpone issuing a construction tender for 1,234 housing units in the strategic E1 area adjacent to Ma’ale Adumim by one month, ensuring it will be published only after the upcoming Knesset elections. The decision sparked fierce condemnation from the Ma’ale Adumim Municipality, which said it will petition the High Court of Justice against the move.
1+Under the legal opinion, the tender—slated for release in the near term—must be frozen because it falls during an active election cycle. The Ma’ale Adumim Municipality countered that the strategic government decision to advance the project was finalized long before elections were called, and that the tender had been progressing along a professional, routine administrative track ever since.
Ma’ale Adumim Mayor Guy Yifrah sharply criticized the legal intervention, stating that “halting the tender is itself an intervention carrying distinct political meaning.” According to Yifrah, while housing tenders continue to move forward unhindered across the country, the E1 initiative was singled out for suspension despite enduring decades of bureaucratic and diplomatic delays.
1+Yifrah emphasized that the city will not accept the ruling and is mounting an immediate legal challenge. “We have waited more than 30 years for E1. Our young couples and our children are not hostages. We will not back down, and we will utilize every legal remedy at our disposal to ensure this tender proceeds,” he said.
The E1 master plan, which includes the construction of 1,234 residential units, has been at the center of international and domestic dispute for years, enduring recurring delays under intense foreign diplomatic pressure against Israeli construction connecting Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim.