Days before Oct 7, UAE leader warned Netanyahu Hamas was planning war, but PM did nothing with info — report

Some 10 days before Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was personally warned by the leader of the United Arab Emirates that Hamas was planning a major offensive move against Israel, but did not update Israeli security leaders and did nothing with the information, Haaretz reports.

The report cites a new book, “Kidnapped: 843 Days of Abandonment,” by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, based on interviews with dozens of sources including senior officials in Israel and around the world. It says three senior foreign officials were updated on the contents of the 45-minute phone call at the end of September. It cites an adviser to Mohammed bin Zayed who had direct knowledge of the conversation.

It says Mohammed bin Zayed (known as MBZ) warned Netanyahu that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning major action against Israel that would lead to bloodshed, unsettle the region and potentially harm the Abraham Accords. The report says MBZ was surprised by Netanyahu’s response, which was sanguine, with the Israeli premier telling him Jerusalem was on top of things in Gaza, that any Hamas action was likely to come in the West Bank, and that Israel was prepared for any scenario.

The report says MBZ’s awareness of a Hamas threat had come from Sinwar himself, who in mid-2023 was frustrated by the lack of progress in negotiations for a prisoner release with Israel (Hamas at the time held several Israelis who had wandered into Gaza of their own accord, as well as the bodies of two soldiers), and who had recently repeatedly warned a senior Fatah interlocutor to warn the Israelis of the consequences if they did not move forward on a deal.

“Tell the Israelis if they don’t advance, I’m preparing a huge surprise for them,” Sinwar is quoted as saying in one conversation. “Tell them to expect an earthquake.”

In another, he told him he was preparing “a formidable operation.” The Fatah official, who had close ties to an adviser to MBZ, informed his friend.

He was “agitated,” the adviser tells Haaretz. “It was clear to him that the operation Sinwar was talking about could affect the entire Middle East, but he was afraid to report the information directly to the Shin Bet. On the other hand, he was even more terrified that if he didn’t update the Shin Bet, the Israelis might accuse him of collaborating with Sinwar. He genuinely feared for his life. Therefore, he decided to convey the message to Bin Zayed.”

The report says the adviser and MBZ himself took the warning to mean Hamas was considering launching a war. It says the Fatah official and the adviser did eventually convey the warning directly to the Israeli Shin Bet in mid-September. Israeli security officials held deliberations about the warning in the following days, but did not understand it as a threat of an assault from Gaza, and no concrete decisions were reached.

MBZ himself was so concerned by the lack of reaction that he then held the direct conversation with Netanyahu, who was dismissive of the threat.

The report notes that on October 1, Shin Bet head Ronen Bar once again proposed proactive action against Hamas including the assassination of top officials, but that Netanyahu made no decision on the matter, saying only that the agency should present its proposals and he would consider them. He made no mention of his talk with MBZ.

“If we had known about the warnings, there’s a chance it would have given much greater weight to the initial message that reached us from Sinwar,” a senior Shin Bet official tells the paper.

“Perhaps it would have also clarified what was behind his sudden withdrawal from the de-escalation talks in early September. It’s possible we would have put two and two together and reached a completely different conclusion from the one we arrived at, one that might have altered our entire intelligence picture.”

In a response to the paper, the Prime Minister’s Office calls the report “a total lie! Prime Minister Netanyahu did not speak with the president of the United Arab Emirates during the period in question and received no warning from him.”