More Evidence Shows Netanyahu Was Warned of Oct. 7 Attack and Did Nothing

By Sharon Zhang

This article was originally published by Truthout

Israel also reportedly swept aside an offer from Hamas days after the attack to release Israeli captives.

More evidence has emerged showing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had prior knowledge of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack but did nothing to stop it, ultimately using the attack and the lives of the Israeli captives as justification to carry out genocide in Gaza.

A report published in Haaretz reveals that the president of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed, had a 45-minute conversation with Netanyahu a week and a half before the October 7 attack, warning that Hamas was preparing for a “major event.” One of bin Zayed’s advisers, a Palestinian émigré from Gaza, said that bin Zayed “recommended trying to find an economic solution” to prevent any escalation from Hamas.

Bin Zayed also warned Joe Biden’s CIA director, William J. Burns, that “something there is about to explode,” the report says. 

But Netanyahu was unfazed, sources said, replying that Israel was ready for anything, and that he believed that Hamas would be taking action in the occupied West Bank. He did not tell the Israeli intelligence agencies, Shin Bet or Mossad, or the Israeli military about bin Zayed’s message — something the Emirati leader never imagined.

Ultimately, Hamas did launch an attack on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed in Israel. That attack has since been invoked countless times as supposed justification for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

Ahead of highly contested elections in Israel next month, Netanyahu’s handling of the attack has recently been under particular scrutiny — including other reports that Netanyahu took hours to respond on the day of the attack, and that his government issued a directive allowing Israeli soldiers to kill their fellow troops in order to prevent hostage-taking that day.

The Emirati president’s warning to Netanyahu came after months of negotiations between a Hamas political official and an Israeli Shin Bet official, mediated by a Fatah official, with the hopes of striking an agreement for long-term stability for Gaza. Prior to October 7, Israel had been maintaining a blockade on Gaza that had already created a humanitarian crisis, with widespread poverty and hunger imposed on the Palestinian population.

During these negotiations, the parties discussed improving Gaza’s economic conditions and a prisoner exchange in which Hamas would release Israeli prisoners and soldiers held in the Strip and Israel would release a few dozen Palestinian prisoners. But even as the deal was being finalized, Netanyahu delayed taking the last steps to solidify it. 

After the delays, Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, pulled away from negotiations, and told the Fatah official to communicate to Israel that he was preparing for war,​​ the report claims. The message was relayed to Shin Bet, who also warned Netanyahu about Sinwar’s threat. 

In the days after the attack, as Israel was launching its all-out assault on Gaza, Sinwar also offered to release all of the civilian captives being held in Gaza, with the remaining captives being held for talks to end Israel’s incursions into the Strip.

Israeli leaders demurred. They responded by saying that the only thing they were interested in was supposedly eliminating Hamas. 

“To be honest,” a senior Israeli military official said, “the issue of the hostages was not seriously on the agenda at this stage, and no one at the military or political level was open to discussing the proposal. The release of the hostages did not even enter the list of war objectives formulated by the government on the night of October 7. Could the proposal have been properly discussed and a decision reached? In substantive terms, the answer is yes.”

Netanyahu’s office has called the report an “absolute lie.” In a statement, the office said that “No warning was given to the Prime Minister from the United Arab Emirates before October 7th.”

Previous reports, however, have also found that Netanyahu and the Israeli military were warned about October 7 multiple times ahead of the attack, but did little to nothing to prepare or prevent it.

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