Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is heading into next month’s election shadowed by a new question: What did he know before Oct. 7, and what did he do with that information? Two people familiar with a late-September 2023 phone call have told the New York Times that the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, privately alerted Netanyahu that Hamas was weighing a significant attack. Multiple former senior Israeli officials say that warning never reached the country’s security chiefs—and meeting minutes indicate that Netanyahu didn’t mention it when he convened them on Oct. 1 to discuss Gaza. Instead, he urged keeping things quiet there so as not to jeopardize what he saw as a near-term diplomatic breakthrough with Saudi Arabia.
Netanyahu has denied receiving such a call and said any Emirati intelligence would have come through formal channels. He has moved to sue the Israeli newspaper and journalists who reported on it. One analyst said that either way, there was more going on to pay attention to than a phone call, per NPR. The reported warning adds to a list, per the Times: a Hamas battle plan obtained and dismissed in 2022, repeated signs of militant preparations, and a broader Israeli assessment that Hamas was focused on ruling Gaza, not war. With Israelis about to vote in their first national election since the attack, opponents say the new account undercuts Netanyahu’s effort to pin the failure on security officials alone.