The High Court of Justice on Thursday rejected petitions filed by the Ma’ale Adumim Municipality and Minister Bezalel Smotrich against the Attorney General’s decision to postpone the opening of tender boxes and the selection of winning bids for the E1 construction project until November 19, 2026—after the elections.
In August 18, 2026, the Ministry of Housing and the Israel Land Authority (ILA) abruptly published a new tender for the construction of 1,234 housing units in the controversial E1 area. The move followed bureaucratic delays that repeatedly stalled a previous December 2025 tender for the entirety of the planned 3,401 units. In response to these delays, the Ministry of Housing and the ILA opted to carve out 1,234 units from the original plan and rushed to issue a new tender, setting the submission deadline for October 19, 2026—just one week prior to the Israeli general election.
Consequently, the Attorney General ruled that given the project’s exceptional public sensitivity and concerns that its conclusion could be leveraged for election campaigning, the closing deadline must be extended by a month to post-election day.
The Ma’ale Adumim Municipality subsequently petitioned the High Court against the ruling. In response, the Attorney General amended her decision, allowing the submission deadline to remain October 19 while shifting only the opening of the tender boxes to November 19. Effectively, this barred the ILA and the Ministry of Housing from selecting winning bids until November 19, 2026.
Minister Smotrich filed a separate petition against the revised decision. On Thursday, Justice Ofer Grosskopf dismissed both petitions.
The Justice ruled that the Attorney General’s decision was reasonable and warranted no judicial intervention, citing two core arguments: first, the risk of the tender being exploited as part of election propaganda; and second, the concern that finalizing the procurement process would bind the hands of the incoming government—an action deemed inappropriate for an interim transition government.
Justice Grosskopf explicitly noted that if the petitioners’ insistence on an expedited selection date was intended to establish a fait accompli that would bypass the election outcomes, “then it is doubtful whether this motive itself is not improper, considering that one of the core purposes of the rules governing interim government restraint is to avoid binding the hands of the next government.”
The tender officially closed on October 19, 2026. Because the tender boxes remain sealed, it is currently unknown how many bids, if any, have been submitted.