Building a Future for Palestine

In the war-torn landscape of the West Bank, Bashar Masri sees an endless field of gleaming condos, and a future for his people.

Photos by Aya Lowe

What keeps Bashar Masri awake at night is worrying about the failure of his vision.

The Palestinian-born, American-educated entrepreneur’s mission is to build the largest private-sector project and the first planned city in Palestinian history. In turn he hopes to generate thousands of jobs and build a model that can apply across the West Bank.

“My vision is to build a sustainable city that could be duplicated,” Masri, fifty-three, explains. “If I sell the real estate, which is the easy part, but fail to create jobs, then the vision fails. But if I can create jobs it means you can take the model and dump it in a depressed area next to Jenin, Jericho or Bethlehem and generate thousands of jobs.”