A senior US government official has pressured the families of victims of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror invasion to drop a lawsuit against a prominent Palestinian-American businessman who is accused of allowing the terror group to use his properties, according to a court filing last month.

The businessman, Bashar Masri, denies all allegations of wrongdoing.

The lawsuit, filed last year, argued that Hamas deceived Israel ahead of the invasion by feigning an interest in developing Gaza, and claimed that Masri and his companies were “an integral part of that grand deception.”

“They owned and operated flagship properties in Gaza that they knowingly and deliberately integrated into Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure and that were crucial elements in Hamas’s attack plan on October 7,” the lawsuit said.

The plaintiffs were around 200 American victims of the October 7 attack and their family members, including the families of slain hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Itay Chen, Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the US, whose son was killed in Gaza in November 2023, and prominent Israeli entrepreneur Eyal Waldman, whose daughter was killed on October 7.

The lawsuit did not say that Masri knew about the October 7 attack, and admitted that some of his development projects appeared to be legitimate, but it did claim that he was aware that Hamas was using his properties for military purposes.

Some of the projects........

© The Times of Israel