Finance Minister and Religious Zionism party chairman Bezalel Smotrich filed a petition with the High Court of Justice on Tuesday against Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, challenging her directive to delay opening bids and selecting winning developers for the strategic E1 construction tender. Smotrich was forced to file and finance the legal petition out of pocket after the State Attorney’s Office rejected the Attorney General’s executive stance. In the petition, the minister argues that the AG’s intervention constitutes an improper, unlawful disruption of a vital national priority.
1+At the center of the dispute is a land marketing tender to construct 1,234 residential housing units across seven sectors in Mevaseret Adumim, within the Ma’ale Adumim municipal boundary. Government policy clearance to advance the project was formally granted in October 2025—well before the current election campaign was declared. The petition emphasizes that each phase of the public tender was managed strictly by civil service professionals along predetermined timelines, completely insulated from political interference by elected officials.
Conversely, the Attorney General’s intervention halted the tender process’s generalization. The E1 corridor is widely considered a premier geopolitical flashpoint, as it physically links Jerusalem to Ma’ale Adumim to the east. The strategic corridor determines whether contiguous Israeli-Jewish communities are secured around the capital, or whether a wedge remains open to facilitate a contiguous ‘Palestinian’ state.
1+Smotrich directed blistering criticism toward the Attorney General, accusing her of political partisanship: “The Attorney General has officially, improperly, and unlawfully aligned herself with Gadi Eisenkot’s campaign, who should scrap construction in E1… Through this obstruction, Gali Baharav-Miara is operating as an instrument of the Israeli left to advance a ‘Palestinian’ state that directly jeopardizes the lives of Israeli citizens. There is no other explanation.”
The minister further contended that Baharav-Miara is abusing the authority of her office, pointing to the structural paradox in which an elected cabinet minister is denied the ability to articulate state policy through official government counsel—because the very official blocking the policy is also empowered to monopolize or deny legal representation. In this context, Smotrich reiterated that the impasse provides definitive proof of the urgent need to split the Attorney General’s powers and regulate the General’s jurisdiction, and that the nationalist camp will decisively complete judicial reform legislation to restore institutional checks and balances in the upcoming legislative term.