Despite pre-Oct. 7 warning, PM reportedly opposed strikes in Gaza for fear they’d undermine Saudi peace talks

After receiving a personal warning from the United Arab Emirates about a potential major offensive being planned by Hamas in the days leading up to the terror group’s October 7 onslaught, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told his security chiefs that he didn’t want to authorize strikes in Gaza because they could have risked harming an ongoing effort for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel.

The revelation was made in a Friday New York Times report that built on earlier reporting from Haaretz about a call Netanyahu received from UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed days before the Hamas invasion and massacre. Netanyahu has denied that such a call took place, but multiple outlets, including The Times of Israel, have confirmed that it did.

Netanyahu subsequently held a meeting with his security chiefs about the situation in Gaza on October 1, 2023, but did not inform them of bin Zayed’s message that Hamas was considering a major attack against Israel, NYT said.

Instead, the premier stressed that Israel’s goal should be to maintain calm in Gaza, and even pushed back when some security officials proposed carrying out military strikes on Hamas leaders in the Strip who were overseeing attacks against Israelis in the West Bank, minutes from the meeting obtained by The Times showed.

Netanyahu expressed concern that military action in Gaza might harm ongoing US-mediated indirect negotiations on a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Such an agreement would have required Israel to make significant concessions toward Palestinian statehood, which Netanyahu and his hard-right government oppose. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said the sides were moving closer, less than a month before the Hamas attack.

Internal Hamas documents obtained by Israel during the Gaza war showed that the terror group’s attack was partially motivated by a desire to thwart Riyadh’s rapprochement with the Jewish state.

Two sources familiar with the call between Netanyahu and bin Zayed have told The Times of Israel that the Emirati leader wanted to confirm that the prime minister had received the intelligence that one of the UAE president’s aides had passed along about an imminent Hamas attack being potentially planned against Israel. Netanyahu said he had received the message and assured bin Zayed that he was dealing with it.

The sources clarified that the intelligence did not include concrete information on a Hamas attack, just that something significant was being planned.

The intelligence that led bin Zayed to personally raise the issue with Netanyahu came from former Palestinian Authority minister Sufian Abu Zaida, who served as an intermediary between Israel and Hamas in failed talks during the months leading up to the October 7 attack about an extended truce.

Abu Zaida told the Egypt-based pan-Arab Alghad TV network earlier this month that he had received a warning from then-Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar that an “earthquake” was coming after the talks with Israel stalled.

The former PA minister then passed the message along to ex-PA Gaza security chief Mohammed Dahlan, who serves as a close adviser to bin Zayed. Abu Zaida is part of a breakaway Fatah faction headed by Dahlan.

After receiving the warning from Abu Zaida, Dahlan asked the mediator to meet again with Sinwar to verify the seriousness of the latter’s threat.

Such a sit-down was held in mid-September 2023, with Sinwar repeating the threat and asking Abu Zaida to pass it along word for word.

Dahlan then informed bin Zayed of the warning, and on September 15, 2023, Abu Zaida also told a Shin Bet contact of Sinwar’s message, Haaretz reported.

Then-Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar requested an immediate phone call with Netanyahu and told him about the “earthquake” threat from Sinwar. The prime minister agreed to hold a consultation with the heads of the relevant Israeli security agencies.

The briefing was held two days later, but no concrete steps were approved. Shortly thereafter, bin Zayed called Netanyahu himself to confirm he had received the warning.

Egyptian warning

Also Friday, a separate report said that an Egyptian warning shortly before October 7 that Hamas was readying for a major attack was directly relayed by Egypt’s then-intelligence chief Abbas Kamel to senior Israeli officials at Ben Gurion Airport.

The warning was first reported two days after the October 7 onslaught, when an Egyptian intelligence official told the Associated Press that Israel ignored repeated warnings that Hamas was planning “something big” and the Ynet news site reported that Kamel personally warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 10 days before the atrocities.

According to the Atlantic, Kamel did not give the Israeli officials any precise intelligence about when the attack would occur or how it would unfold when he landed on September 26 at Ben Gurion Airport, where his plane remained for just over an hour as he met with unspecified officials.

The US magazine reported that Kamel told the officials that Israel needed to swiftly shift course or risk a combustion in Gaza, recommending Jerusalem grant further economic concessions to Hamas to prevent such a scenario, but noted it was unclear what the Israeli officials did with this warning.

The report added, however, that Netanyahu attended a classified briefing that same day during which he approved some concessions to Hamas. It was not immediately clear what concessions it was referring to, though two days later Israel reopened a border crossing for Gazan laborers employed in the country as part of a deal with Hamas that was reportedly brokered by Egypt.

The Atlantic said Netanyahu’s spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for comment, though his national security adviser at the time of the October 7 attack, Tzachi Hanegbi, denied to the magazine that Kamel flew to Israel on September 26 or that there was any Egyptian warning. Netanyahu’s office has previously denied that Kamel personally warned the premier.

Jacob Magid contributed to this report.