Netanyahu: Egyptian intel chief was in Israel before Oct. 7, he didn’t meet with me

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday confirmed reports that Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel secretly flew to Israel days before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, while also hitting out at his political foes and touting his government’s actions in the West Bank during an extended television interview ahead of the upcoming elections.

“He didn’t meet with me,” Netanyahu claimed to the pro-government Channel 14 talk show “The Patriots,” “because I was in a memorial ceremony for IDF soldiers at that time.”

“He didn’t meet with me, he didn’t speak with me,” he continued. “When does an intelligence chief meet with a head of state?” In fact, Netanyahu has met with Kamel, hosting the Egyptian spymaster in 2021 at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem.

Kamel reportedly told Israeli officials that Hamas was planning a major attack if Israel didn’t agree to a deal including a prisoner release and economic concessions.

Netanyahu claimed he did not know who Kamel met with: “The head of the Egyptian intelligence was here. He spent something like 50 minutes on the ground. I want to know who he met,” he said.

When reports of the warning came out, Netanyahu said in a statement, “No early message came from Egypt and the prime minister did not speak or meet with the intelligence chief since the establishment of the government — not indirectly or directly.”

The reports about Kamel are among a series of allegations that Netanyahu received early warnings of a major attack from Gaza in the lead-up to October 7, but did not act on them. Netanyahu has flatly denied the reports and blamed the security establishment for the failures surrounding the attack.

Netanyahu also denied that he blocked a viable deal in Gaza that would have secured the earlier return of hostages and saved the lives of some who died in captivity, saying that there was a readiness by some for complete capitulation in Gaza, which was unacceptable to him, and would not have even guaranteed the return of all the hostages.

He again insisted that security chiefs were to blame for not waking him on the night of October 7, claiming that despite signs indicating a Hamas attack they were afraid he would cause a “miscalculation” by striking the terror group hard.

According to Netanyahu, the intelligence and military heads believed Hamas was carrying out a drill or preparing for a minor attack. They saw Hamas terrorists putting Israeli SIM cards into their phones, and senior Hamas commanders heading underground, he said, but “they were locked in a conception that it was a drill, or a small thing.”

“If they had woken me up, they knew I’d have woken everybody and canceled Nova and put the air force on alert,” he went on.

“If we wake up the prime minister, he’ll cause Hamas to attack us without meaning to,” Netanyahu asserted the security chiefs believed.

Plans for West Bank and Gaza

Netanyahu announced during the interview that the Israel Defense Forces drew up a “powerful” plan to deal with the possibility that Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank might turn their weapons against Israel.

The plan was presented 10 days ago, he said.

If needed, he said, Israel will use “massive force.” He mentioned the possibility of the PA security forces turning their guns on Israel in a speech earlier Tuesday in the West Bank.

Netanyahu said his plan for Gaza is “simply to eliminate Hamas.” He did not elaborate on how that might be accomplished following the two-year war sparked by the October 7 onslaught, which largely ended a year ago with a ceasefire that divided Gaza between Israeli and Hamas control.

He said that he was not ordering the implementation of such a plan at the moment because voting for the Knesset will take place in two weeks, and he would be accused of starting a war for political reasons.

Israel, he claimed, has completed 90% of the mission in its conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah, which he suggested could target Israel as part of what he said was an Iranian effort to orchestrate an attack to influence the October 27 election.

Asked about reports of such a plan, Netanyahu said, “I can tell you that’s right. Just right. They want to do it directly or via one of their proxies.”

He added that Iran may want to orchestrate such an attack in the West Bank as well.

“They say openly, ‘We have to bring down Netanyahu’,” he said, listing not only Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, but also PA President “Mahmoud Abbas and “Mansour Abbas” — the leader of the Israeli Arab party Ra’am. They all say they want to oust him, he said, because “they want to destroy Israel. In order to prevent this, we have to win.”

Earlier in the day, Netanyahu warned Israel’s enemies not to test it in the lead-up to elections.

Asked whether Saudi Arabia has asked for help in the fight against the Houthis, Netanyahu answered, “There are barely any Middle Eastern states that aren’t asking us for help.”

He added that Western countries publicly condemning Israel were also asking for help and defense technology from Israel.

Urges investigation of investigators

Netanyahu also called for a criminal investigation into those involved in prosecuting him on corruption charges, including former attorney general Avichai Mandelblit, who brought the indictment, former state attorney Shai Nitzan, and state prosecutors Liat Ben-Ari and Yehudit Tirosh.

“This trial never should have started and should certainly end immediately,” he said.

He added, “And I think we need to do a criminal investigation of everyone who was involved in its fabrication.”

“It is now clear,” he said, that his prosecution was “a political witch hunt.”

He alleged that this included “the blackmailing of witnesses, the forging of protocols, and fraud.”

Netanyahu has been on trial in three corruption cases since he was indicted in January 2020. He faces charges of fraud and breach of trust in the cases known as Case 1000 and Case 2000, and charges of receiving a bribe, as well as fraud and breach of trust, in Case 4000.

Netanyahu strenuously denies any wrongdoing, and has argued that the charges against him were fabricated in an attempted political coup by his political rivals.

Later in the interview, Netanyahu claimed that the balance of power between the branches of government has been broken, and that “there is a dictatorship by the judicial system and its emissaries, including the attorney general.”

Additionally, Netanyahu vowed to Channel 14 that if he wins the elections, he will build new Jewish communities and farms in the Galilee and in the Negev, as has been done in the West Bank.

The goal is to create a clear Jewish majority in those regions, he said.

He won’t be moving the Arabs out, he said, but rather “moving in residents of the center” of the country, with new transport and residential infrastructure to encourage them.

If the opposition wins, there will be “Arab autonomies” in the Galilee and Negev, claimed Netanyahu.

He also maintained that a “miracle” has been unfolding in the West Bank, with the expansion of settlements that will ensure there is no Palestinian state. “What was going to be a Palestinian state won’t rise,” he said, unless he loses power.

‘Complete panic’

Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s main election rival, responded to the prime minister’s hour-long appearance on Channel 14 by calling him “a liar” who is “dangerous to Israel.”

In the interview, Netanyahu reiterated his claims that Eisenkot would close the pro-Netanyahu outlet, arrest right-wing opponents and install a judicial dictatorship.

He also claimed that if an Eisenkot-led alliance wins the elections, “we’ll lose everything,” specifying, among other things, that a Palestinian state would be established, that Israel would withdraw from the territory it is currently occupying inside Lebanon and Syria, and that nothing would be done to ensure the fall of the regime in Iran. He also ridiculed the notion that Eisenkot could emulate the unprecedented relationship he has established with US President Donald Trump.

Netanyahu is “in a complete panic,” tweeted Eisenkot.

In an earlier post, the Yashar party leader asserted that Netanyahu’s “scare tactics no longer make an impression on anyone, and declared that “the claim that ‘only Benjamin Netanyahu knows how to provide security’ collapsed three years ago.”

“What I can promise you,” Eisenkot went on, “is worthy, courageous leadership that is concerned with making decisions for the citizens of Israel.”

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.