Netanyahu Warned

Netanyahu got a secret UAE warning before the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack, the New York Times has confirmed. It never reached Israel's security chiefs, the paper found, citing five former senior officials.

Two people told the Times that UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed alerted Netanyahu that Hamas was weighing a major strike, according to Mediaite's account of the report. One had spoken with Sheikh Mohammed directly. The other had been briefed on the call.

That call built on an earlier report in the Israeli paper Haaretz, cited by CNN, which said Bin Zayed phoned Netanyahu for 45 minutes about ten days before the attack. Bin Zayed warned that then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning a move that could cause bloodshed, Haaretz reported. Sinwar had told a mediator to warn Israel to expect an "earthquake." Netanyahu reacted "relatively calmly" and told Bin Zayed that Israel was prepared, Haaretz said.

On Oct. 1, 2023, Netanyahu gathered his security chiefs to discuss Gaza. He never mentioned the warning, according to meeting minutes the Times reviewed, Mediaite reported. Action in Gaza, he told them, could jeopardize a Saudi Arabia normalization deal he believed was close.

Netanyahu has denied all of it. He called the Haaretz account "fabricated" and "false" and said he had ordered his lawyers to sue the paper and its authors, Al Jazeera reported. A review of his call log by the National Security Council and the military secretary, he said, turned up no record of the conversation. The report, he added, was politically motivated.

Four opposition leaders demanded an investigation. Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman and Yair Golan issued a joint statement over what they called Netanyahu's failures, CNN reported. Bennett called the alleged inaction "criminal negligence." Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid said the attack would have been prevented had Netanyahu "fulfilled his role," according to CNN.

Israelis vote next month in elections that have turned partly on responsibility for Oct. 7, CNN and Al Jazeera reported. Netanyahu is seeking a seventh term.

Shlomi Eldar, one of the Haaretz journalists behind the original report, told CNN's Jake Tapper he stood by it. "I have the document, I have records, I have everything that shows the president of the UAE called Netanyahu a week and a half before October 7 and gave him a warning that Yahya Sinwar was planning a major attack on Israel," Eldar said.