A Warning Before October 7: What the UAE Reportedly Told Netanyahu, and Why It Matters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received an explicit warning from UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed about an impending Hamas attack roughly ten days before October 7, 2023, according to a Haaretz exposé published on September 8, 2026. The Emirati leader called Netanyahu and spoke with him for 45 minutes, during which he shared the intelligence directly. Netanyahu did not pass the warning on to his security chiefs, Haaretz reported.

The Jerusalem Post confirmed key parts of the account, reporting that bin Zayed warned Netanyahu of a major Hamas operation planned by Yahya Sinwar ten days before the attack and that Netanyahu is said to have dismissed the warning. Haaretz also reported that Sinwar, later killed by Israel, had warned a former Palestinian official that militants were preparing the attack, suggesting the intelligence trail extended beyond a single source, according to Le Monde's summary of the Haaretz findings.

The UAE, when asked for comment, said intelligence is shared with Israel but gave no comment on the specific reported warning to Netanyahu, Haaretz's Middle East desk reported.

Netanyahu denied the report outright. He called the allegation that the UAE president warned him more than a week before the October 7 attack an "absolute lie," as reported by The Guardian.

The response from Israel's political and military establishment was swift. Former chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot said Netanyahu led Israel "blindly to disaster" despite the October 7 warning, Haaretz reported. A Haaretz editorial published the same day, titled "Netanyahu Knew," asserted that the prime minister bore direct responsibility for the October 7 attacks, Haaretz's editorial board wrote.

The revelations land in an Israeli political landscape already shaped by nearly three years of post–October 7 recrimination, multiple judicial and state inquiry processes, and a war in Gaza whose conduct has drawn proceedings at the International Court of Justice. Netanyahu's denial frames the Haaretz report as fabrication; his political opponents and former military leaders are treating it as confirmation of a long-suspected intelligence failure at the political level rather than the operational one.

The broader context here matters for understanding the stakes. A direct head-of-state phone call is a fundamentally different kind of intelligence signal than the fragmented warnings Israel's military has acknowledged receiving before October 7. When one national leader picks up the phone to warn another, the information carries the weight of an entire intelligence apparatus behind it, with both signals intelligence (intercepted communications) and human intelligence (informants and sources on the ground). The central question raised by the report is not whether the intelligence existed but why it was not acted upon and why it was not shared with the officials responsible for Israel's defense.

Eisenkot's intervention carries particular weight in this regard. As a former chief of staff — the top uniformed officer in Israel's military — his assessment that Netanyahu led the country "blindly to disaster" directly attributes the failure to the prime minister's judgment, not to gaps in intelligence collection. His statement transforms the Haaretz finding from a press exposé into a political challenge backed by a credible military voice.

The UAE's carefully limited response fits Abu Dhabi's broader diplomatic posture. By acknowledging the intelligence-sharing relationship with Israel while neither confirming nor denying the specific warning, the UAE preserves the channel itself — a cornerstone of Gulf-Israeli security cooperation since the Abraham Accords (the 2020 normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states) — without exposing itself to the political fallout of publicly contradicting Netanyahu's denial.

The Haaretz exposé does not, by itself, settle the question of what Netanyahu knew and when. It does narrow the terms of the debate. If the call occurred as reported, the failure on October 7 was not one of collection but of dissemination and decision-making at the highest political level. Netanyahu's categorical denial ensures that the question of who knew what, and when, will remain a central fault line in Israeli politics, and in whatever accountability process follows the war.