Erdogan turns a blind eye as his Palestinian ‘brothers’ plan attacks from haven in Istanbul
Adham Muselmani braced himself against the February wind sweeping through Istanbul’s Taksim Square and dialled the number he had been given. The phone rang once. Twice. The 23-year-old Palestinian rehearsed the line he had been told to say: “This is Tariq from Jerusalem. I’m in Istanbul and I’ve come to eat knafeh [a sticky dessert].”
An older man with a gruff voice answered and Muselmani repeated the phrase.
“Wait there,” the man said. “I’m coming to you.”
Forty minutes later, he arrived in the square on a motorcycle and told Muselmani to get on. They rode a winding route west from central Istanbul with the man occasionally glancing over his shoulder to see if they were being followed.
They stopped at a restaurant and Muselmani was at last able to see the face of the man he had come to meet: it was Zacharia Najib, a 63-year-old Hamas operative who had spent 17 years in jail for his role in the kidnap and killing of an Israeli soldier.
Najib was released in 2011 in a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas and lived briefly in Gaza before moving to Turkey.
But he had not forgotten his native Jerusalem, nor Hamas’s commitment to destroy Israel.
Sitting in the restaurant, Najib told the younger man that if he wanted to be remembered, he needed to kill a prominent Israeli. He gave him three targets: Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem; Yehuda Glick, an MP from Benjamin Netanyahu’s party; or Roni Alsheich, Israel’s police chief.
Two days later, Najib gave him some cash and told him to collect more in Jerusalem to buy weapons. Muselmani returned to his home at Jerusalem’s Shuafat refugee camp and began looking to buy a pistol. It was then he was arrested by the Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of MI5.
The failed plot was one of several recent attempted attacks on
Israel that Hamas has planned from Istanbul while Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, has seemingly turned a blind eye and embraced the Islamist militant group, a Daily Telegraph investigation has found.
Transcripts of Israeli police interrogations with Muselmani and other would-be attackers show senior Hamas operatives are using Turkey’s largest city to direct operations in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
While relations between Turkey and Israel are frosty, they do maintain their diplomatic ties. Israel has repeatedly presented Turkey with evidence that Hamas is plotting operations from Istanbul.
But Mr Erdoğan continues to embrace Hamas and welcomes the group in his country. Last week, he openly hosted Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, at his office in Istanbul. “We will keep on supporting our brothers in Palestine,” Mr Erdoğan said.
Turkey is defying the US by allowing Saleh al-arouri, Hamas’s deputy leader, to move about freely on Turkish soil, even though Washington considers him “a global terrorist” and has put a $5million bounty on his head. Arouri seems to have no fear of arrest in Turkey. This week, he posed for photographs while meeting other Hamas leaders in Istanbul. The city has proved such a safe harbour for the Islamist militant group that a dozen Hamas figures have moved there from Gaza in the last year, according to Israeli and Egyptian intelligence records.
Among them is Abdel Rahman Ghanimat, the former leader of the “Surif Cell”, a Hamas squad that carried out a series of suicide bombings, including a 1997 attack on the Café Apropo in Tel Aviv which killed three young women. Kamal
Awad, a Hamas financier recently sanctioned by the US Treasury, has also moved to Istanbul.
Israel’s foreign ministry said: “Israel is extremely concerned that Turkey is allowing Hamas terrorists to operate from its territory in planning and engaging in terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.”
A Turkish diplomatic source denied Hamas was planning attacks from Turkey. He added that the group was “not a terrorist organisation”.
“Hamas is a political reality that won the elections in Palestine,” the source said. “We reject all claims that Turkey is being used for anti-israel activities.”
Hazem Qassem, a Hamas spokesman, also denied that the group was planning attacks from within Turkey. “These are baseless allegations that aim to negatively affect Hamas’s relationship with Turkey. Hamas’s resistance activities are conducted only in the land of occupied Palestine,” he said.
Hamas’s military focus in Turkey is on remotely planning attacks in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, where it is difficult for the group to organise them. Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian semi-government, cooperate closely to thwart Hamas in both areas.
In one police transcript, a Palestinian imam describes a meeting in Istanbul with a Hamas operative named Hisham Hijaz. He was freed in the same 2011 prisoner exchange as Najib and, like him, focuses on carrying out attacks in the West Bank.
“[Hijaz] told me he thinks about the West Bank 24 hours a day,” the imam said, and even ordered him to find recruits for a suicide attack against Israel. He offered to pay the attacker’s family $20,000.
The plot never materialised.
The Telegraph attempted to contact both Najib and Hijaz in the Başakşehir district of Istanbul, a political stronghold of Mr Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party. But neither could be reached.
Mr Erdoğan presents himself as a champion of Palestinians and has embraced Hamas even as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Arab states have distanced themselves from the group. During Saturday’s meeting with Hamas’s political chief, Mr Erdoğan discussed “issues concerning the Palestinian cause, including the danger posed to the al-aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] and Turkey’s role in support of the Palestinian cause”, according to Hamas. Lower-level meetings are held frequently, managed via a channel between Jihad Ya’amor, a Hamas official, and Turkey’s national intelligence agency.
Hijaz suggested to the imam that Mr Erdoğan placed only slight restrictions on Hamas activity in Turkey. “He told me that the [Hamas] leadership met with Erdoğan and he agreed that the Hamas office could collect money but told them to keep away from [Turkish] state institutions because he did not want problems.” Amid the increasingly dire humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza, thousands of Palestinians are leaving the Strip, travelling through Egypt to Turkey to start new lives.
Among them are at least 11 Hamas figures who have left in the last year, according to a list compiled by Israeli and Egyptian intelligence agencies. Seven of them were freed in the 2011 prisoner exchange.
The Telegraph was able to confirm the migration of some of the men through social media posts.
One man, Nahad Abu Kishk, deleted his Facebook account after The Telegraph attempted to contact him, but posts from his wife show the family was living in Gaza in 2018 before moving to Turkey earlier this year. Palestinians living in Istanbul also confirmed that some of the others had recently arrived there. “There are a lot of Hamas leaders who come to Istanbul with their families and their children. “Why is it that Hamas leaders get to leave the situation in Gaza when the people have no jobs or services?” asked one Gazan.