Report: UAE intel warned Shin Bet of Hamas action before Oct. 7, prompting leader’s call to Netanyahu

The United Arab Emirates’ intelligence service warned the Shin Bet in September 2023 that Hamas could carry out a violent action by the end of the month — days before the October 7 massacre took place — Channel 12 reported Tuesday, saying the intelligence warning was what prompted UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed’s subsequent phone call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the matter.

According to the network, which cited three senior Emirati sources with direct knowledge of the matter, the UAE warning was essentially identical to information the Shin Bet had received through a separate channel from then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar warning of an impending “earthquake” over negotiations for the release of Palestinian security prisoners.

Critics of Netanyahu, among them victims of the eventual Hamas attack and families of those killed or kidnapped, have pointed to the alleged warnings as part of what they allege were failed policies that enabled the attack to take place.

Channel 12 originally reported on Sinwar’s warning in 2024, but reports of the phone call between bin Zayed and Netanyahu only emerged in recent weeks with a Haaretz exposé. The call was confirmed to The Times of Israel by an Emirati source. Netanyahu has denied that any such conversation took place.

Bin Zayed called Netanyahu to ensure that the intelligence passed by the Emiratis to the Shin Bet had reached him, and was assured by the premier that the matter was “being handled,” the network reported.

However, when the end of September passed with no attack, Israeli officials challenged their Emirati intelligence counterparts, saying the latter’s sources had not been telling the truth, Channel 12 said.

The network also reported new details on why the Shin Bet misinterpreted Sinwar’s warning, in which the Hamas leader reportedly cautioned to “prepare for an earthquake in the prisons over the prisoner issue,” an apparent reference to Palestinians incarcerated in Israel, including those who committed terror attacks.

At the time it was received, Israeli intelligence was separately seeing indications that a senior Iranian official, which Channel 12 said it cannot name, had asked Hamas to take responsibility for negotiations to free Israeli-Russian researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov from the pro-Iranian Iraqi group holding her, which had reportedly agreed to the proposal.

Officials who participated in a Shin Bet-convened assessment at the time told Channel 12 that Sinwar’s warning fit the emerging intelligence picture “like a glove,” and that nobody in the discussion proposed an alternative interpretation of any impending attack.

A senior security official told Channel 12 that the alleged subsequent warning from bin Zayed could have altered that assessment.

“If a subsequent message did indeed reach the prime minister himself from MBZ, it could have been the final piece that would have sent us toward additional, deeper investigative steps,” the official said. “Something was needed to outweigh the reassuring indicators we had accumulated for ourselves. It is possible that this could have been that sign.”

Tsurkov was eventually freed in September 2025. Sinwar was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in October 2024.

Earlier this month, Haaretz reported on the alleged phone call between bin Zayed and Netanyahu, and the warning it included.

According to that report, the alert from bin Zayed was of a broader scope: that Sinwar was planning major action against Israel that would lead to bloodshed, unsettle the region, and potentially harm the Abraham Accords, which had established diplomatic ties between Israel and the UAE.

The report said MBZ was surprised by Netanyahu’s response in the 45-minute phone call, 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 Haaretz report said bin Zayed’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 Palestinian prisoner release deal with Israel.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorists launched a cross-border, multipronged assault, brutally massacring 1,200 people in southern communities, mostly civilians, taking 251 hostages to Gaza, and sparking years of conflict that spread across the Middle East.

In response to the Haaretz report, the Prime Minister’s Office said the report was “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.”