Israel has issued a tender for more than 1,200 housing units in the highly sensitive area of the West Bank, a move opponents warn would effectively block the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The housing ministry has opened bids for 1,234 of the 3,401 housing units approved by the Israeli government last August. The project covers approximately 12 square kilometres between East Jerusalem and the settlement of Maale Adumim.

The deadline for bids is 19 October, just days before Israel's general election on 27 October. The timing would allow the current government to sign contracts with construction firms that a future government would find difficult to cancel.

Israel has built around 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East War. An estimated 3.3 million Palestinians live alongside them. Palestinians seek the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza as the basis for a future state.

Despite fierce international opposition, successive Israeli governments have allowed settlements to expand. That expansion has accelerated sharply since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022, leading a right-wing, pro-settler coalition, and further following the outbreak of the Gaza war triggered by Hamas's attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Israel captured the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan in the 1967 war. It annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, a move not recognised by the vast majority of the international community.

Under international pressure, Israel had held off for decades on plans to build in E1. Many of its allies and Palestinians argued that construction there would deal a major blow to hopes of a two-state solution, effectively bisecting the West Bank.

The current Israeli government approved E1 construction a year ago, expressly to "erase" the idea of a Palestinian state. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is ultranationalist and a settler, said at the time that the idea of a Palestinian state was "being erased."

Opponents warn the project would cut off the northern West Bank from the south and prevent the development of a contiguous Palestinian urban area connecting Ramallah, East Jerusalem, and Bethlehem.

Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, which has challenged the plans in court alongside Bedouin Palestinians living in the area, said the government was acting to pre-empt any future reversal.

"The government is trying to sign contracts with contractors before the elections so that it will be much harder for the next government to cancel the construction," the group said.

It added that even partial implementation would "fundamentally" alter "the geographic and strategic character of the area by severing the northern West Bank from the south and isolating East Jerusalem."

"Building in E1 will ruin the possibility of reaching an end to the conflict and a peace arrangement based on two states," Peace Now said.

Palestinian activist Jamal Juma, of the Stop the Wall campaign, said the project would have a devastating impact on Palestinian communities.

"It is destruction of the communities, it's destruction of families... this is a disaster," he said.

Juma added that more than 40 Bedouin communities would be affected and would face eviction.