Tenders for record number of West Bank settlement housing units published in 2025
Some 5,667 housing units will be built when the tenders are awarded, will house 25,000 residents; previous high was in 2018 when tenders for just over 3,800 homes were published
The number of housing units in West Bank settlements for which tenders have been published this year has reached an all-time yearly high, with tenders for 5,667 units issued so far in 2025.
The previous record was set in 2018 when tenders were published for the construction of 3,808 housing units.
According to the Peace Now settlement watchdog, the planned housing units will accommodate approximately 25,000 residents once built.
Tenders are published for construction companies to bid on contracts for the construction of housing units and other projects in the West Bank after the planning and approval has been completed.
This means that barring some form of political intervention, the construction has already been approved and will go ahead once the tenders are awarded, which can typically take one to two years.
The large majority of tenders approved in 2025 were for construction in two West Bank settlement cities: Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, and Ariel in the northern West Bank.
In August, the highly controversial E1 project for Maale Adumim was finally approved in the planning process, and the same month tenders were published for the construction of some 3,400 units in the project which are slated to be built on land to the west of the West Bank city.
Tenders for another 730 housing units were announced, also in August, for a new neighborhood of Ariel.
Earlier this month, the Housing and Construction Ministry published two tenders for the construction of a new neighborhood in the settlement of Geva Binyamin (Adam), southeast of Ramallah. One tender is for the construction of 342 housing units across five compounds, and another for 14 single-family homes designated for reserve soldiers.
“The Netanyahu government is exploiting every moment in power to destroy Israel’s chances for a future of peace and prosperity,” said Peace Now of the construction tenders.
The Palestinians and much of the international community hold Israeli settlements to be illegal and argue that it harms the chances of the Palestinians establishing a viable state in the West Bank.
“Building thousands more homes in the settlements and adding tens of thousands more settlers in the West Bank only deepen the pit from which Israel must climb out…
“The American president may have declared that there will be no annexation [of the West Bank], but the Israeli government is doing everything it can to realize the annexation on the ground and turn Israel into an apartheid state,” the watchdog argued.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has driven forward the planning and approval process for large numbers of new housing units in the settlements, as well as the large-scale appropriation of land for the construction of new settlements and settlement infrastructure, and the retroactive legalization of what were formerly illegal settlement outposts under Israeli law.
Smotrich, who has advanced these processes as a minister in the Defense Ministry with responsibility for civilian affairs in the West Bank, has stated that these and other efforts are designed to de facto annex the territory and thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not by slogans but by deeds. Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea,” the far-right minister declared when the plans for E1 were approved.
Photo: Yet more new buildings at a construction site in settlement of the illegal Israeli settler colony Maale Adumim, in Palestine’s West Bank, on 29 February 2024. Source: Menahem Kahana/AFP.
