Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his election campaign are making strenuous efforts to suppress the “warning story” of the October 7, 2023 attack before it happens, and his opponents are accused of ignoring it.
However, information is flowing in the Hebrew and American media that he received a warning until it became a serious accusation. It raises tremendous anger among Netanyahu's circle and an obsession that "there are many forces in the Arab and Western world interested in overthrowing his government." The story relates to the Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis.
Information came to the fore again in a book by Israeli journalists, indicating that an agreement was ready to be signed between Israel and Hamas several weeks before the attack, which included a prisoner exchange deal and a long security truce, but Netanyahu backed down from it and began to delay its approval. This position angered the late leader of Hamas and the most prominent face of October 7, Yahya Sinwar, so he decided to launch the attack, but before that he issued a warning to the Israeli government that “a response will cause an earthquake.”
Egyptian ignored the warnings story
In the past two weeks, extensive reports have followed in Israel, the United States, and Europe, indicating that the content of Hamas' warning reached Tel Aviv and Netanyahu personally several times and through various parties.
The most recent of these testimonies came from the American magazine “The Atlantic”, which said that the head of Egyptian intelligence at the time of the “October 7” attack, Major General Abbas Kamel, personally arrived in Tel Aviv for a visit that lasted only 40 minutes, met with a senior official on his plane at the airport, and returned to his country immediately.
Netanyahu’s office quickly issued a denial of the magazine, considering it part of counter-propaganda during the elections with the aim of “manipulating public opinion.”
In the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, the Arab affairs correspondent, Samdarberry, published that she had also received information about these warnings, which had arrived from the Egyptian source. She said, in her article, on Sunday: “The message coming from Cairo was strong and influential, but Sinwar blinded the eyes of the officials here. There were other warnings.
In her article, Perry confirmed that the secret visit made by the former Egyptian intelligence chief to Israel took place 11 days before October 7.
The Israeli journalist added that on September 26, the first warning came from Egypt about “something terrible” being planned in Gaza, claiming that three days after “October 7,” she received a call from what she described as a “high-ranking Egyptian source,” and she quoted him as saying: “We conveyed to Netanyahu a warning that something terrible is about to happen from the Gaza side.” If Israel does not change its policy, it is expected that Gaza will explode in its face.”
Egypt ignored commenting on this information about the warnings, and Asharq Al-Awsat contacted concerned parties in Egypt, including the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the State Information Service, and the Ministry of Information, to obtain a comment, but this was not possible, and no Egyptian statement was issued until Sunday evening.
Egyptian diplomats and parliamentarians questioned the validity of The Atlantic’s report, stressing that the report “aims to raise and question Cairo’s positions towards the Palestinian issue,” and comes in the wake of the current internal election campaigns in Israel.
A member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Rakha Ahmed, is confident that this news is not true, asking: “If we assume the information is correct, why was the Hamas attack not stopped at the time?”
Ahmed believes, in statements to Asharq Al-Awsat, that this news “comes within the framework of the internal election campaigns in Israel currently; Because the opposition coalition accuses the current Prime Minister of being aware of what happened on October 7.”
He pointed out that “the aim of raising it at this time is also to raise doubts about Cairo’s positions, and to target its relationship with the Hamas movement, especially after Egypt’s firm positions towards the Palestinian issue, which were clearly emphasized in the meetings of the United Nations General Assembly.”
The Atlantic report did not identify the Israeli officials whom the former Egyptian intelligence chief met during his visit, which lasted about an hour, as they claimed, while the magazine quoted a former Israeli government official as saying that “it is unreasonable that Netanyahu was not aware of the visit or the meetings that Kamel held with Israeli intelligence officials.”
Egyptian Parliament member Ayman Mohsab believes that raising such news “comes within the framework of a systematic plan to distort Egypt’s image,” adding in statements to Asharq Al-Awsat that “Cairo is aware of the goals of raising such news,” noting that “ignoring an official response to it does not mean not warning of these practices and their impact on younger generations,” and that “Egypt’s positions toward Gaza and Palestine are general, clear and firm, and from day one it calls for an end to the war and an end to crimes.” Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.
The atmosphere is saturated with gasoline
However, another publication in the same context was presented by an investigation by the journalists, Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, which they published in the Haaretz newspaper on September 8th, as well as in their recently published book entitled “Kidnapped - 843 Days of Wasting,” during which they confirmed that Sinwar had tried before the attack to send a warning to Israel.
They wrote in the report: “These were the last days of September 2023, and (terrorist) operations were igniting the West Bank, crowds of Gazans were regularly demonstrating in front of the border wall, and Israel was suffering from internal conflicts over judicial coup laws. The atmosphere was saturated with gasoline vapor, and everyone who followed the events with full awareness felt that fires were lurking around every corner.”
Al-Dar and Yuval revealed that Sinwar's messages to Israel came through Dr. Sufyan Abu Zayda, the former minister in the Palestinian government who is close to the leader of Fatah, Muhammad Dahlan.
The two writers reported that Dahlan conveyed his concerns to prominent Emirati officials, who in turn made contact with Netanyahu, and expressed concern that the war would not only lead to bloodshed, but would shake the entire region and harm the Abraham Accords.
The writers stated that three high-level foreign sources had been briefed on the content of the communications, including the head of the CIA at the time, William Burns. They said that in their disclosure they relied on in-depth research in which they relied on dozens of sources in Israel and abroad, including high-level sources, in addition to internal recordings, documents and correspondence.
Dahlan quoted his estimate that the call and warning were aimed at making Netanyahu take the message seriously and take action, “and no one imagined that the prime minister would hear these statements without informing the heads of the security establishment: the head of the Shin Bet, the head of the Mossad, and the chief of staff.” None of them knew about the warning coming from Abu Dhabi.
The Sinwar evaporates... and warns: Expect an earthquake
The two writers narrate that at the beginning of September 2023, Sinwar suddenly cut off all communications with the crew that was conducting the negotiations. A senior Shin Bet official said: “He has completely disappeared from our radar. He has evaporated.”
A Hamas source explained that Sinwar had lost patience with the slow pace of the Israelis. Thus, the direct channel of communication that was established between the Shin Bet agent, Idi Rotem, and the Hamas man, Ghazi Hamad, which was managed with Netanyahu’s approval, was cut off.
It is noteworthy that Israeli reports confirmed that the previous communication channel returned to work at full capacity a year after October 7, in September 2024, when the need to rescue the faltering hostage deal became acute.
Going back to before October 7, specifically on September 23, Al-Sinwar arranged a special meeting with Abu Zaida, and told him firmly: “Tell the Israelis that I will prepare a big surprise for them if they do not advance in the (calm) talks.” Here the use of the word “was” is supposed to warn them of danger. “Tell them to expect an earthquake.”
