Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing mounting political pressure following a report claiming that United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed warned him about a planned Hamas operation shortly before the October 7, 2023 attack.
Netanyahu’s office has rejected the report as an “absolute lie”, but his political opponents have seized on the allegations as further evidence of what they describe as repeated warnings that were ignored ahead of the deadliest attack in Israel’s history.
The leaders of four opposition parties — Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman and Yair Golan — issued a joint statement demanding “an immediate and thorough investigation” into what they called Netanyahu’s “failures and malfunctioning.”
“The Israeli public is entitled to know: What did Netanyahu know, when did he know, why did he not update the security establishment, and why did he not act to protect Israeli civilians?” the opposition leaders said.
Bennett, a former prime minister, said the report was “true” and accused Netanyahu’s alleged failure to act on the information 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 officials and Egyptian authorities.
“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, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed spoke with Netanyahu by telephone around 10 days before the Hamas attack. The alleged conversation lasted about 45 minutes, during which the UAE president reportedly warned that Yahya Sinwar, then Hamas’ leader in Gaza, was preparing a major operation that could lead to bloodshed and destabilise the region.
The report also referred to a message allegedly delivered by Sinwar through a Palestinian mediator to both the UAE and Israel in September 2023. Sinwar reportedly described the planned operation as an approaching “earthquake.”
Haaretz reported that Netanyahu responded “relatively calmly” to the information and assured the UAE president that Israel was prepared to deal with any possible scenario.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, however, firmly rejected the account.
Netanyahu “did not speak with the president of the United Arab Emirates during the period in question and did not receive any warning from him,” the office said.
The dispute comes as Israel approaches its October elections, with Netanyahu’s opponents making accountability for the October 7 attack a major campaign issue.
More than 1,200 people were killed, and over 250 others were abducted to Gaza during the Hamas assault.
Since the attack, several senior figures in Israel’s security establishment have left their positions. The defence minister, military chief of staff, and heads of military intelligence, the Mossad and Shin Bet, have either resigned, been removed, or completed their terms.
Eisenkot, who is currently polling as Netanyahu’s strongest challenger, said the Haaretz report further demonstrated that the prime minister had “led Israel blindly” towards the failures surrounding October 7.
He also renewed his commitment to establishing a state commission of inquiry if elected.
Almost three years after the attack, Netanyahu has continued to resist calls from bereaved families and survivors for an independent investigation into the intelligence and security failures that allowed Hamas to launch the assault.
Netanyahu and his allies have instead argued that senior security officials failed to wake him during the night before the attack, despite intelligence suggesting that Hamas was preparing for an offensive.
The dispute over Netanyahu’s knowledge has also previously involved his wife, Sara Netanyahu.
Last month, she suggested in an interview with pro-government Channel 14 that Yair Golan may have known about the attack in advance. Golan, a retired major general who rushed independently to the Gaza border on October 7 to assist survivors, was questioned over how he was “already dressed and ready” to travel south at dawn.
Sara Netanyahu said this was despite the fact that “others knew nothing, including the prime minister.”
Golan demanded an apology and described the claim as a “vile conspiracy theory”. He also threatened legal action, accusing Netanyahu’s camp of attempting to “rewrite” the events surrounding October 7 and shift blame away from the prime minister.
Following the latest Haaretz report, Golan wrote on X that Netanyahu’s “they-didn’t-wake-me-up narrative is over. He knew, he was warned.”
He described the alleged failure as “not an error in judgment, but a conscious and criminal abandonment.”
The Democrats party subsequently intensified its campaign against Netanyahu, putting up a giant billboard above Tel Aviv’s main highway.
The billboard carried the headline: “The 1,200 murdered file – Causing death by negligence.”
