Benjamin Netanyahu was reportedly warned by the president of the United Arab Emirates that Hamas was preparing a major operation against Israel 10 days before the October 7, 2023 attack.
According to a bombshell investigation published Tuesday by Haaretz, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan personally called Netanyahu roughly 10 days before the attack and warned him that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was preparing a major operation.
The report says Netanyahu responded calmly, telling the Emirati leader that he believed Hamas was more likely preparing an operation in the West Bank and assuring him that Israel was prepared for any scenario.
Then, according to Haaretz, Netanyahu did something even more consequential: he did not pass the warning along to Israel’s top security chiefs.
Netanyahu’s office is denying the report.
“An absolute lie!” the prime minister’s office said, insisting that Netanyahu did not speak with the UAE president during the period in question and did not receive any warning from him.
But the allegations have already detonated politically in Israel.
Former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, now one of Netanyahu’s leading political rivals, accused the prime minister of ignoring repeated warnings before the massacre.
“Netanyahu received dozens of warnings ahead of Oct. 7 and ignored them all,” Eisenkot wrote. “He is unfit.”
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett went even further, saying the report about the UAE warning was true and accusing Netanyahu of bearing “personal and direct responsibility” for the failure that led to the deaths of thousands of Israelis.
Bennett said Netanyahu failed to alert the country’s security leadership, prepare Israel for an attack or convene the cabinet.
And the UAE warning would not have been the only warning.
According to the Haaretz investigation, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had previously sent messages through a Palestinian intermediary indicating that his group was preparing a major operation—describing it as an “earthquake” and a terrifying operation.
That information was eventually passed to Israeli security officials and the UAE leadership, according to the report.
The investigation also says Egypt’s intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, separately warned Netanyahu that Hamas was preparing “something unusual” and a potentially terrifying operation.
The most explosive part of the new report is what allegedly happened to the UAE warning afterward.
Haaretz says Netanyahu did not brief the heads of the Shin Bet, Mossad or the Israeli military about his conversation with bin Zayed.
A senior Shin Bet official told the newspaper that knowing about the warning could have changed the intelligence assessment before October 7.
That matters because the October 7 attack exposed one of the most devastating intelligence and security failures in Israel’s history.
Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures cited by the Associated Press.
Israel responded with a massive military campaign in Gaza that has left most of Gaza in ruins and killed 73,658 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.
Now, nearly three years later, the question of what Netanyahu knew, and when he knew it—is once again exploding into the center of Israeli politics.
Israel is heading toward elections on October 27, with Netanyahu facing a serious political challenge from opposition figures including Eisenkot and Bennett.
Netanyahu has spent years facing demands for accountability over the October 7 failure. His critics have repeatedly argued that warnings about Hamas were ignored while his government maintained a strategy aimed at containing the group rather than preparing for a major assault.
The new Haaretz investigation would add an extraordinary new piece to that story: a direct warning from the leader of a friendly Arab state, delivered personally to Netanyahu shortly before the attack, that allegedly never reached Israel’s top security leadership.
The question hanging over Israel is the same one that has never really gone away: What did Netanyahu know before October 7, and what did he do with the warnings?
