Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing mounting political pressure following a report that United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed allegedly warned him about a major Hamas operation shortly before the October 7, 2023 attack.
Netanyahu’s office has rejected the report, describing it as an “absolute lie”. However, opposition leaders have seized on the allegations, demanding an investigation into whether the prime minister received advance information about the planned attack and failed to act on it.
The report comes less than two months before Israel’s October elections, with Netanyahu’s political opponents making accountability for the October 7 failures a major campaign issue.
Opposition leaders Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman and Yair Golan jointly called for “an immediate and thorough investigation” into what they described as Netanyahu’s “failures and malfunctioning.”
“The Israeli public is entitled to know: What did Netanyahu know, when did he know, why he didn’t update the security establishment, and why didn’t he act to protect Israeli civilians?” they said.
Bennett, a former prime minister, said the report was “true” and accused Netanyahu’s alleged failure to respond to the warnings of amounting to “criminal negligence.”
Another former prime minister, Yair Lapid, said he had also warned publicly about the possibility of an attack before October 7, alongside senior Israeli security and Egyptian officials.
“If Netanyahu had fulfilled his role, the massacre would have been prevented,” Lapid said in a statement.
The allegations were published by Haaretz newspaper based on findings from an upcoming book by Israeli journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruti Yuval.
According to the report, Bin Zayed spoke with Netanyahu approximately 10 days before the Hamas attack in a 45-minute telephone conversation. During the call, the UAE president allegedly warned that Hamas’ Gaza leader, Yahya Sinwar, was preparing a major operation that could result in significant bloodshed and destabilise the region.
The report also referred to a message allegedly passed by Sinwar through a Palestinian intermediary to the UAE and Israel in September 2023, in which he warned of an approaching “earthquake.”
Haaretz reported that Netanyahu responded “relatively calmly” and told Bin Zayed that Israel was prepared for any eventuality.
The UAE Foreign Ministry did not confirm the alleged conversation but also did not deny it.
It said it “does not comment on media stories or speculation regarding conversations between government leaders”, while adding that “When necessary, all relevant intelligence has been and continues to be communicated between the relevant entities.”
An Israeli source familiar with the matter claimed Netanyahu’s office had asked the UAE to deny the report, but Abu Dhabi instead issued the statement concerning intelligence-sharing.
Netanyahu’s office, however, issued a firm denial, saying he “did not speak with the president of the United Arab Emirates during the period in question and did not receive any warning from him.”
Eldar rejected Netanyahu’s denial when speaking to CNN, insisting that the report was accurate.
“It’s true,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “I worked on this report for almost a year and a half,” he said.
“I have the document, I have records, I have everything that shows that the president of the UAE called Netanyahu a week an a half before October 7 and gave him a warning that Yahya Sinwar is planning a major attack on Israel,” Eldar said.
October 7 accountability becomes election issue
The dispute has intensified an already heated debate over responsibility for the October 7 attack, which left more than 1,200 people dead and more than 250 others abducted to Gaza.
Several senior Israeli security officials who were in senior positions when the attack occurred have since left their posts, including the defence minister, military chief of staff and heads of military intelligence, Mossad and Shin Bet.
Eisenkot, who is currently seen as Netanyahu’s strongest challenger in opinion polls, said the report demonstrated that Netanyahu had “led Israel blindly” toward the failures surrounding the attack.
He has pledged to establish a state commission of inquiry if elected.
Nearly three years after the attack, Netanyahu has resisted calls from bereaved families and survivors for an independent commission to examine the intelligence and security failures that allowed Hamas to carry out the assault.
Netanyahu and his allies have instead argued that security chiefs failed to alert him adequately during the hours before the attack, despite intelligence suggesting that Hamas was preparing for a major offensive.
The issue has also triggered a separate political dispute involving Netanyahu’s wife, Sara Netanyahu.
Last month, she suggested in an interview with pro-government Channel 14 that Golan may have known about the impending attack because he was prepared to travel south early on October 7 to assist survivors.
Golan rejected the allegation, demanding an apology and describing it as a “vile conspiracy theory.” He also threatened legal action, accusing Netanyahu’s camp of attempting to “rewrite” the events of October 7 and shift responsibility.
Following the latest report, Golan wrote on X that the prime minister’s “they-didn’t-wake-me-up narrative is over. He knew, he was warned.”
He described the alleged failure to act as “not an error in judgment, but a conscious and criminal abandonment.”
The Democrats party later escalated its campaign against Netanyahu by putting up a large billboard over a major Tel Aviv highway carrying the headline: “The 1,200 murdered file – Causing death by negligence.”
