Israel’s far-right finance minister and other settlers living in the illegally occupied West Bank fumed on Sunday after their country’s attorney general pushed a key deadline for the widely condemned E1 project until after the Israeli Knesset election.

Although the International Court of Justice, plus governments and human rights groups around the world, have concluded that all Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory violate international law, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has charged ahead with expansion plans, granting final approval for the building of 3,401 housing units in the E1 area last year.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had celebrated that decision, declaring that the project “buries the idea of a Palestinian state,” as it would split the West Bank in two by connecting Jerusalem and the settlement Ma’ale Adumim. While signing a related agreement a year ago, Netanyahu similarly said that “there will be no Palestinian state.”

Despite an ongoing legal challenge to the E1 plan from Bedouin Palestinians who live in the area and Israeli peace groups, Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing last month issued a tender to build seven residential compounds with 1,234 units, giving contractors until October 19—a week before the October 27 election—to submit bids.

“This is a last-minute maneuver that is part of the scorched-earth policy the government is pursuing at the end of its term to secure long years of conflict and bloodshed for Israel,” the Israeli watchdog Peace Now said at the time. “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 office of Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara this week ordered a monthlong postponement of the deadline for bids, “so that it will fall after Election Day, thereby reducing the concern that the tender could be used for prohibited election propaganda.”

Smotrich on Sunday accused her of “trying to stop the construction in E1” and “interfering in the election campaign” to help Gadi Eisenkot, the Yashar party leader who could lead a coalition government that ousts Likud’s Netanyahu, depending on the results.

The finance minister called on Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, who chairs the Central Elections Committee (CEC), to intervene to “ensure that the attorney general and her people do not turn into active players in the election campaign in an attempt to back up the left, prevent the right from forming a government, and to enable the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger the existence of the state of Israel.”

Ma’ale Adumim also challenged the attorney general’s move on Sunday, with a petition to the High Court of Justice. Mayor Guy Yifrach said that “if the claim is that continuing the tender is political, I say exactly the opposite: Stopping it now is an intervention with political implications.”

“The E1 plan is already facing heavy international pressure, and developers and contractors need certainty,” Yifrach added. “Is it not enough that outside Israel they are trying to deter them from the project, now we are adding uncertainty from within our home as well?”

Earlier this month, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada jointly announced bans on imports from illegal Israeli settlements, and partnered with nine other nations—Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden—for a statement that describes the situation in the West Bank as “rapidly deteriorating amid unprecedented levels of settler violence and settlement expansion, including the unacceptable decision to publish tenders for the E1 settlement project.”

Then, 19 US Senate Democrats on Wednesday introduced a bill to sanction people or companies that facilitate the construction for Israeli settlers in the E1 area, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of the lead co-sponsors, condemning the project as “a move towards de facto annexation of the West Bank.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), another lead sponsor and longtime supporter of Israel, said on social media Friday that “the Netanyahu campaign to extinguish the possibility of a future Palestinian state by building Israeli settlements in the E1 area of the West Bank must end. I’m leading a new effort to sanction those involved in its development and preserve a future pathway for peace.”

In addition to pushing for the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Netanyahu has overseen a genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Despite a ceasefire agreement reached nearly a year ago, Israeli attacks continue, and the official death toll keeps rising, topping 74,000 on Sunday.

The bleak milestone came two days after The New York Times corroborated Haaretz’s recent reporting that in September 2023, United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan warned Netanyahu about now-deceased Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s plans “for a major event” targeting Israel. The Israeli leader has denied those reports, and even threatened to sue Haaretz.

However, in a signal that Netanyahu and his allies are worried about the upcoming election, the CEC this week voted to disqualify all Arab-majority political parties from the election, while declining to take similar action against Smotrich’s Religious Zionism, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit, and Zehut, founded by Moshe Feiglin, a former Likud member. The Supreme Court is set to review the disqualifications this week.

Meanwhile, Eisenkot suggested this weekend that the barred parties would not be part of any government he leads. As Haaretz summarized, he said that “all coalition partners would have to recognize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, uphold the values of the Declaration of Independence, support mandatory military service, and recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization that must be destroyed.”

Yoav Segalovich from the United Arab List’s Knesset slate responded that anyone seeking to lead the country must “show leadership and not fold in the face of the Likud’s scare campaign,” adding: “Israel needs deep change and genuine partnership, through courageous leadership. Eisenkot will not have a government without the United Arab List.”

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