Israel Opens Bidding to Build 1,234 Homes in E1 — the Corridor That Would Sever the West Bank — and 29 Senate Democrats Tell It to Rescind the Tenders While the State Department Pointedly Says Nothing About E1
On Aug. 18, 2026, Israel's Construction and Housing Ministry published a tender inviting contractors to build seven residential compounds totaling 1,234 housing units in E1, the tract of occupied West Bank land east of Jerusalem that every U.S. administration since Clinton has treated as a red line. Bids are due Oct. 19. Building E1 would wall occupied East Jerusalem off from Bethlehem and Ramallah and cut the northern West Bank from the southern one — which is why successive American governments, Republican and Democratic alike, have pressed Israel not to develop it. The Trump administration's response was conspicuously narrow. Asked about the tenders, the State Department restated existing language — that the United States "does not support Israel annexing the West Bank" — without mentioning E1 at all. On Aug. 28, Sen. Ruben Gallego led a statement signed by 29 congressional Democrats calling on Israel to withdraw the tenders outright. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who has pushed hardest in the Senate on West Bank settler violence, had already gone further, calling E1 a violation of international law that would leave Israel "an apartheid, pariah state." No Republican member of Congress is on record objecting to the tenders.
“We urge the Israeli government to immediately rescind these tenders, halt settlement expansion in the West Bank, and take urgent action to rein in settler violence.”