A report published by The Atlantic over the weekend confirmed an Israel Hayom revelation from six months ago that the plane carrying Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Sept. 26, 2023, to warn Israel of a possible attack from Gaza.
Kamel arrived in Israel as the country’s senior leadership gathered for a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. An aircraft belonging to Egyptian intelligence landed in an isolated section of Ben Gurion Airport, remained on the ground for only about an hour and then took off again for Cairo. Sources familiar with the protocols governing sensitive operations believe an urgent meeting took place aboard the aircraft during that brief stop.
At precisely that time, then-National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, the official who would normally have been in regular contact with Kamel, was absent from the ceremony. Was he dealing at that moment with the next war? The National Security Council declined to comment when Israel Hayom originally published its report.
The original Israel Hayom report. | Photo: Amos Ben Gershom, GPO
A day later, in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, measures easing restrictions on the Gaza Strip and other arrangements concerning Gaza were approved, according to a source who was in the room and confirmed the details to Israel Hayom.
Kamel maintained regular contact with senior Israeli officials, including government ministers, and supported the development of those ties. Some of those contacts were public. In late 2021, Orna Barbivai, who served as economy minister in the Bennett-Lapid government, met with Kamel in an effort to advance economic relations.
The warning lights were flashing
Israel Hayom’s original report followed nearly a year of work and conversations with people who were able to provide information.
Another detail revealed in our report came from a senior Egyptian source whom we met in central Israel. According to the source, an Egyptian delegation arrived at Israel’s Foreign Ministry two weeks before Oct. 7 to meet its counterparts in the diplomatic corps and warn that “the situation in Gaza is extremely volatile.”
“We said everything could blow up,” the senior Egyptian source tells Israel Hayom. “We told our interlocutors on the Israeli side that the situation in Gaza and the West Bank was extremely volatile and could lead to an escalation,” the source added.
Gazans infiltrate Israel on October 7. Photo: Arab social media
Before the original report was published, Israel Hayom contacted several Foreign Ministry sources who dealt with Egypt. They could not identify the date on which the meeting took place, but confirmed that messages had reached the ministry from Egypt before Oct. 7 warning that the situation involving the Palestinians was extremely sensitive and could erupt.
Another Foreign Ministry source confirmed before publication that the Egyptians had frequently conveyed messages saying the situation involving the Palestinians in general, and Gaza in particular, was explosive and needed to be resolved rather than merely managed.
The source confirmed that Egypt had conveyed messages about Gaza before Oct. 7, adding that whenever sensitive information was received, it was immediately reported to more senior officials both inside and outside the ministry. The implication was clear: the Prime Minister’s Office.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is seen against the backdrop of the October 7 attack on Israel. Photo: Reuters
Additional information about a warning conveyed from Egypt to Israel was reported by Smadar Perry in Yedioth Ahronoth. Dr. Nimrod Novik made similar remarks to journalist Amir Oren on the Efrakheset podcast.
Shlomi Eldar and Ruti Yuval also published an excerpt from their book in Haaretz reporting that about a week and a half before the Oct. 7 attack, United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan called Netanyahu and spoke with him for 45 minutes. According to the report published in Haaretz, bin Zayed explicitly warned Netanyahu that Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar was planning a major move against Israel. Two sources confirmed the Haaretz report to The New York Times on Friday.
Minutes from a meeting convened by Netanyahu in early October 2023 and obtained by The New York Times show that the prime minister told senior security officials that any Israeli action in Gaza could jeopardize the chances of Saudi Arabia establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, a development he believed was close to being realized.
Why does it matter?
The real question is why these reports matter. In the absence of a state commission of inquiry, information gathered by journalists must be collected and preserved before it is lost.
Beyond that, however, the significance of the warnings demonstrates the need to take such messages seriously and carefully examine what they contain. As many have written, the failure of Oct. 7 was not merely tactical. It was also a strategic failure involving, among other things, the way warnings reportedly received from countries in the region were understood.
Focusing on one particular question or another risks missing the larger story, parts of which have still not been revealed because no state commission of inquiry has been established to examine all the details and collect testimony in a comprehensive manner.
The ruins at Kibbutz Nir Oz after October 7. Photo: Liron Moldovan
‘Fake news serving an unknown party’
The Prime Minister’s Office issued a response Saturday to The Atlantic report.
“This is a false claim. It was already denied at the time, and it is now being recycled in order to mislead the Israeli public. On Oct. 11, 2023, Egypt officially denied that it had warned Israel about the Oct. 7 attack. In the months preceding Oct. 7, Prime Minister Netanyahu neither met nor spoke with Abbas Kamel, who was then the head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, and no Israeli intelligence official conveyed any such warning to the prime minister. Recycled lies do not become true simply because they are repeated again and again.”
It should be noted that neither Israel Hayom’s report nor The Atlantic’s report claimed that Netanyahu was the person who met with Kamel.