The New York Times reported on Sept. 25 that United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in late September 2023 that Hamas was planning an attack. It also reported that Netanyahu did not pass the warning to Israel’s security chiefs. Haaretz first reported the warning on Sept. 8. Netanyahu’s office called that report “a total lie” and said he “did not speak with the president of the United Arab Emirates during the period in question.” According to the Times, he has since said that any intelligence from the Emiratis would have come “through intelligence channels.”
The Times has two sources on the call: one who said they had spoken with Sheikh Mohammed, and another who said they had been briefed by someone on it. The warning it describes is less specific than the one in the Haaretz account. Haaretz reported a 45-minute call relaying Yahya Sinwar’s threat of a “zilzal,” an earthquake. The Times says one source described the information as not specific about whether Hamas was planning rockets or a ground invasion, and that the original source of the Emirati intelligence is unclear. A third person told the Times that Sheikh Mohammed later described the call to then-CIA Director William Burns, saying he had warned Netanyahu of “a looming threat of violence in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip carried out by Hamas.”
The Times also reviewed minutes of a meeting Netanyahu held with his security chiefs on Oct. 1, 2023, six days before the attack. According to the minutes, he did not mention the warning. He said the goal should be to maintain calm in Gaza, in order to facilitate the normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, which he believed was imminent. Five former senior Israeli officials told the paper that the warning never reached the security leadership and does not appear in any of the internal military or intelligence investigations of Oct. 7.
The Times cites an Israeli state ombudsman’s report as saying Netanyahu had instructed the security services to pursue “postponing conflicts” and “preserving Hamas as an effective, restrained, and restraining governing authority.” Netanyahu and his allies have blocked a state commission of inquiry into the failures. Israelis vote in late October in their first national election since the attack.
