Haaretz says the UAE president warned Netanyahu before 7 October; his office calls it a lie

Haaretz reported on 8 September that Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, personally warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Hamas was preparing a major operation about ten days before 7 October 2023. Netanyahu's office called the account an absolute lie and said no warning was given to the prime minister by the UAE. "If there was any relevant information, it was passed through intelligence channels between the two countries," the statement said. The Emirati foreign ministry said it does not comment on media stories or speculation about conversations between leaders.

The newspaper based the story on a forthcoming book by reporters Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval and on what it described as dozens of Israeli and foreign sources, recordings, internal documents and correspondence. In that account, bin Zayed called from the presidential palace in Abu Dhabi and spoke for 45 minutes. He named Yahya Sinwar as the man preparing the operation and said he feared bloodshed that could shake the region and the Abraham Accords. Netanyahu, the paper wrote, stayed calm, said he believed Hamas meant to act in the West Bank, and told the sheikh that Israel was ready for any scenario. He did not, on this telling, brief the heads of Shin Bet, Mossad or the army. A senior Shin Bet official quoted by Haaretz said knowledge of the warning "could have changed our entire assessment picture."

Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister now leading a ticket into next month's election, told 103FM that he knows the fact is true. He added that Abbas Kamel, then head of Egyptian General Intelligence, also warned Netanyahu days before the attack. Opposition leaders used the report to call Netanyahu unfit for office and to demand a state commission of inquiry headed by a Supreme Court justice. The next Israeli election is about 50 days away.

Two things can be held at once. A newspaper and a book are not a declassified cable. Netanyahu's office has denied the personal call. Bennett, who is running against him, says he knows the call happened. The UAE will not confirm or deny a leaders' conversation. That is the public record as of 8 September. It is thinner than a verdict and thicker than a rumour, because it names a 45-minute call, a date window, a second intelligence warning from Cairo, and a specific claim that the Israeli security chiefs were left out.

The political use of the story is already underway. For three years the fight in Israel has been over who knew what before dawn on 7 October. A prime minister who received a heads-of-state warning and kept it off the operations table would face a different kind of inquiry than a prime minister who never got the call. A prime minister who can show the warning never reached him would close that file. Neither test can be run from a newspaper extract. It can be run by a commission with subpoena power, which is why the opposition is asking for one now, with an election date already printed.

Readers should treat the Haaretz account as an allegation with named sources and a named denial. The next facts that matter are documents, not speeches: whether a call log exists, whether Egyptian and Emirati channels produced written notes, and whether any Israeli chief of staff or agency head will say, on the record, that the conversation never reached them.