The absence of mechanisms enabling Jerusalem’s Planning and Building Committee to vet the security backgrounds of real estate developers nearly allowed a Palestinian businessman accused of supporting Hamas to build a hotel in Jerusalem, the Knesset’s Internal Affairs and Environment Committee heard on Monday.
Tzviya Zicherman, legal adviser to the Planning Committee, explained that the plan was originally submitted by the Greek Orthodox Church, and only in recent days did the committee learn that the land had been sold to an Italian company, which is why the discussion was removed from the agenda. “The district planning office has no ability at all to check the identity of the applicants,” she noted.
The Jerusalem District Planning Committee had been set to meet on Monday as part of the approval process for Bashar al-Masri’s hotel after the plan was approved by a local committee before the war.
The meeting was canceled after the families of deceased former hostages protested, noting that Masri is currently being sued in the US over his alleged facilitation of Hamas terrorist activities in the Gaza Strip.
Attorney Moran Revivo from the Jerusalem Municipality confirmed that, in light of the new information, it was decided to halt the discussion of the plan and remove it from the agenda.
Oversight failures nearly allowed Jerusalem hotel with Hamas ties
“This is an inconceivable event,” Knesset Internal Affairs Committee chair MK Yitzhak Kreuzer (Otzma Yehudit) said as he opened the discussion.
“We are witnessing enormous involvement of money and initiatives wrapped in nice words about ‘coexistence,’ but these are whitewashed explanations. It has been proven that Hamas terror tunnels ran beneath al-Masri’s hotels, that he supplied them with food and electricity, and there is no chance he didn’t know about it. While a lawsuit by hundreds of bereaved families is being conducted against him in the United States, here in Israel, he operates without interference.”
Ruby Chen, the father of St.-Sgt. Itay Chen, Eyal Waldman, father of Danielle Waldman, and Yizhar Shai, father of St.-Sgt. Yaron Uri Shai were among those who protested the plans. “We call on the acting interior minister, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the mayor of Jerusalem, Mr. Moshe Lion, to immediately halt this moral outrage and remove the proposal from the committee’s agenda,” they stated.
The fathers noted the ongoing lawsuit against Masri in the US, in which 200 families alleged multiple of Masri’s Gaza-based properties “concealed tunnels underneath them and had tunnel entrances accessible from within the properties, which Hamas used in terrorist operations before, on, and after October 7.”
“Defendants facilitated the construction and concealment of those tunnels and even built above-ground solar panel installations that they then used to supply Hamas with electricity to the tunnels,” the lawsuit claimed.
While Masri’s office at the time called the lawsuit “baseless,” he resigned from his position at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government shortly after. Notably, the lawyers seeking action against Masri said in August that they were unable to locate him to serve him a legal summons.
Masri did not respond to The Jerusalem Post’s request for comment.
While MK Kreuzer promised he would “do everything possible to block and prevent him from accessing construction tenders in Israel in the future,” the lack of oversight already caused harm to the families of those killed by Hamas.
While Masri’s office at the time called the lawsuit “baseless,” he resigned from his position at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government shortly after. Notably, the lawyers seeking action against Masri said in August that they were unable to locate him to serve him a legal summons.
Masri did not respond to The Jerusalem Post’s request for comment.
While MK Kreuzer promised he would “do everything possible to block and prevent him from accessing construction tenders in Israel in the future,” the lack of oversight already caused harm to the families of those killed by Hamas.
Ruby Chen, whose American-Israeli son was killed defending Nahal Oz during Hamas’s invasion, told the Post, “It’s very sad that we need to deal with the trauma after two years of fighting to bring our son back, and part of the rehabilitation would be the fact that we will be able to focus on rehabilitation, but instead, we see this type of injustice happen also by the State of Israel.”
The bereaved father shared that he couldn’t understand how there was so little oversight on a multi-million shekel project and added that it was unusual that Masri had been able to enter the country through an Israeli airport without question. “How is it that he is also not denied that type of service?” he asked.
“What prevents Mr. Masri, in a minority holding or any type of entity that he is associated with, from buying a piece of land in Beersheba or Tel Aviv… And how is it that the Israeli justice system is not able to at least identify those individuals that are sought in international courts?” he continued. “There needs to be a process that puts these people in a very specific category, that does not allow them to benefit financially and [does] not allow them to do business in Israel if there were crimes that they committed.”
While finding the incident distressing, Chen said he hoped that the public attention gained would bring new energy to the lawsuit against Masri and encourage Israel to help facilitate the serving of the Palestinian millionaire.
“Until today, we have not seen that the Israelis have been able to identify him and serve him with these papers,” he said. “Hopefully that will change soon.”
In their public statement, the fathers shared, “While Israel is drawing yellow lines in Gaza that Hamas terrorists are forbidden from crossing, Israel is allowing Bashar al-Masri to roam freely on the streets of Tel Aviv, dine in restaurants and hotels, and now the absurdity reaches its peak, as he is about to receive land from the state to build a hotel and luxury buildings in a strategic location facing the Old City in Jerusalem.
"That alleged terrorist in a suit, who hosted Hamas’s top leaders at his hotel in Gaza and simultaneously enabled them to use compounds beneath the hotel, is about to build a hotel here in Israel!” he continued.
The parents of the deceased hostages warned that any transfer of land to Masri would have carried the lesson for future terrorists that they can “murder Jews today [and] profit from it tomorrow.”
“Our children’s blood is no longer just forfeit; it has become a lucrative real estate plan,” they said. “It is forbidden to give Bashar al-Masri even one square centimeter, at least until his trial is concluded.”
Keshet Neev contributed to this report.