The European Union is reportedly preparing a package of sanctions against Israel if it goes through with its plan for a major, controversial settlement expansion in the hot-button E1 area of the West Bank.

The sanctions, reportedly covering commerce, academics and security, would add teeth to a range of Western condemnations of the plan.

The government on Tuesday issued a tender for the construction of seven residential compounds with 1,234 housing units in the E1 area east of Jerusalem, which Israeli settlement activists seek to develop in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Channel 13 reported, citing two Western diplomats, that the EU has devised a list of initial sanctions if the construction begins.

The list was said to include specifically labeling products from Israel — not only from West Bank settlements — as well as scaling down academic collaborations with Israel and halting certain security and diplomatic collaborations between Brussels and Jerusalem.

The E1 expansion would connect the Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim areas, effectively scuttling the prospect of contiguous Palestinian sovereignty between the population centers of Bethlehem, East Jerusalem and Ramallah.

The project was frozen for long years amid fierce opposition from the international community, including past US administrations, which feared that building a new settlement neighborhood on the mostly empty tract of land would rule out a viable Palestinian state.

The housing units in the tender are some of the roughly........

© The Times of Israel