  MACS J0717 is the most massive and extended of the Hubble Frontier Field
clusters. It is one of the more difficult clusters to model, and we argue that
this is in part due to the line of sight structure (LoS) at redshifts beyond 2.
We show that the Grale mass reconstruction based on sources at 3<z_s<4.1 has at
least 10^{13}M_sun more mass than that based on nearby sources, z_s<2.6, and
attribute the excess mass to a putative LoS, which is at least 75" from the
cluster center. Furthermore, the lens-model fitted z_s's of the recent Kawamata
et al. reconstruction are biased systematically low compared to photometric
z_s's, and the bias is a function of images' distance from the cluster center.
We argue that these mimic the effect of LoS. We conclude that even in the
presence of 100-200 images, lens-model adjusted source redshifts can conceal
the presence of LoS, demonstrating the existence of degeneracies between z_s
and (sub)structure. Also, a very good fit to image positions is not a
sufficient condition for having a high fidelity mass map: Kawamata et al.
obtain an rms of 0.52" for 173 images of 60 sources; our Grale reconstruction
of the exact same data yields a somewhat different map, but similarly low rms,
0.62". In contrast, a Grale model that uses reasonable, but fixed z_s gives a
worse rms of 1.28" for 44 sources with 126 images. Unaccounted for LoS can bias
the mass map, affecting the magnification and luminosity function estimates of
high redshift sources.
