West Bank E1 tender prompts UK to summon Israel envoy

Britain summoned Israel's charge d'affaires on Wednesday and demanded a halt to the E1 settlement project in the occupied West Bank after Israeli authorities opened bidding for more than 1,200 homes in the area.

British Foreign Minister Ed Miliband called the move “an unacceptable and destructive act” and said Israel must halt the plans, retract the tender and stop settlement expansion.

Miliband said he had delivered the message directly to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar. Britain also said it would announce measures in the coming weeks, including sanctions targeting people involved in what it called illegal settlement expansion.

The E1 plan covers a roughly 12-square-kilometre area east of Jerusalem between the city and the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim. The full project seeks to build about 3,400 homes there.

Israeli NGO Peace Now said Israel's housing ministry published the latest tender on August 18 and immediately opened it for bids. The group said the tender covered more than 1,200 housing units, about one-third of the planned development, with submissions due by October 19, one week before Israeli elections scheduled for October 27.

The project has drawn international condemnation because it would further separate east Jerusalem, occupied and annexed by Israel and mainly inhabited by Palestinians, from the West Bank. The UN secretary general said last year that the project posed an “existential threat” to a contiguous Palestinian state.

The West Bank is home to around three million Palestinians and about 500,000 Israeli settlers, excluding east Jerusalem. Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.