“An absolute lie!” That was the reply from the Prime Minister’s Office to a Haaretz report that Benjamin Netanyahu had been personally warned, about 10 days before October 7, 2023, that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning a major attack. The office said Netanyahu “did not speak with the president of the United Arab Emirates during the period in question and did not receive any warning from him.”
Egypt’s intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, sits at the center of the argument that followed. Strategically, the calculus is simple: if Cairo’s spymaster warned Israel’s prime minister directly, the failure was political as well as operational.
What Haaretz reported
The Haaretz account comes from research for a coming book by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval. Three senior foreign sources told the paper that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan raised the alarm in a 45-minute conversation with Netanyahu. Netanyahu reportedly answered that he thought Hamas meant to act in the West Bank and that Israel was ready for any scenario. The paper said the warning never reached the security chiefs; former Shin Bet head Ronen Bar and former military chief of staff Herzi Halevi both said they were not told.
Kamel enters the same account. Haaretz said he separately contacted Netanyahu around then to warn that Hamas was planning “something unusual, a terrifying operation.” The prime minister, it reported, mentioned neither call at an October 1 security discussion about Hamas and Gaza.
The intelligence behind the alarm, according to the report, came from a Palestinian intermediary with contacts on both sides. In September 2023 Sinwar reportedly spoke of a “zilzal,” an earthquake, and later of “the mother of all surprises.” It reached the Shin Bet on September 15. Two days later Bar reportedly told Netanyahu Israel was “on a collision course.”
Kamel in Israel
The Atlantic went further, reporting that Kamel secretly flew into Israel 11 days before the attack. On September 26, 2023, while senior Israeli officials gathered in Jerusalem for the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, a chartered Cessna linked to Egyptian intelligence landed at Ben-Gurion Airport with Kamel aboard. The magazine said he delivered a warning that Hamas was preparing a significant attack and that time to head off escalation was running out.
A separate thread came from Sufian Abu Zaida, a former senior Fatah official. In a documentary on Al-Ghad he said he met Sinwar in Gaza on September 14, 2023. Sinwar asked him to tell Israel that before the end of the month Hamas would put “cards” on the negotiating table that would cause an “earthquake.”
Backing and doubt
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett backed the Haaretz story on 103FM. “I’m telling you that I know this fact is true,” he said, naming both the Emirati president and Kamel.
Others were less sure. Eyal Tsir Cohen, a former head of international diplomacy at the Mossad, told Army Radio on September 28 that he recalled no such warning and no visit by Kamel, though he allowed that Kamel could have come without passing through his division. Danny Yatom, another former Mossad chief, took the opposite view. “We’re talking about two or three different sources that warned,” he said. “You can’t ignore that.”
The UAE has declined to comment on the Haaretz report. It has said only that the two countries have kept “open and direct lines of communication” since establishing relations in 2020.
Sources
- Netanyahu Ignored Explicit Warning Hamas Was Planning ‘Terrifying Operation’ 10 Days Before Oct. 7 Attack: Report
- Former Mossad official says he does not know about Egypt, UAE October 7 warnings | The Jerusalem Post
