On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced sharp political backlash over a report that UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed had warned him of a major Hamas operation days before the October 7, 2023, attack.
The Prime Minister's Office dismissed the report as a "lie," but with Israeli elections approaching next month, Netanyahu's opponents have seized on the report as new evidence of what they describe as a growing series of warnings that he has ignored.
The four opposition leaders, Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman, and Yair Golan, issued a rare joint statement calling for an “immediate and comprehensive investigation” into Netanyahu’s “failures and negligence.”
The statement said: “The Israeli people have the right to know: What did Netanyahu know, when did he know it, why did he not inform the security establishment, and why did he not take any action to protect Israeli civilians?”
For his part, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that the report was “true,” and wrote on his account on the X platform that Netanyahu’s alleged disregard for warnings amounted to “criminal negligence.”
Bennett's political ally, former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, said he publicly warned of an attack before it occurred, as did senior Israeli and Egyptian security officials. “If Netanyahu had done his part, the massacre would have been prevented,” Lapid added in a statement.
The report, which was published in Haaretz, was based on the findings of a soon-to-be published book by Israeli journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruti Yuval.
The report stated that the President of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, called Netanyahu about 10 days before the October 7 attack, and warned him during a 45-minute call that the leader of Hamas in Gaza at the time, Yahya Sinwar, was planning a major move against Israel that might cause bloodshed and destabilize the region.
The report referred to a message that Sinwar conveyed to the UAE and Israel via a Palestinian intermediary in mid-September 2023, warning of an imminent “earthquake.”
Haaretz newspaper reported that Netanyahu responded “relatively calmly” to this information, and assured the UAE president that Israel is prepared for any scenario.
The Israeli Prime Minister's Office strongly denied the report's veracity, stating that Netanyahu "did not speak with the President of the United Arab Emirates during the aforementioned period, nor did he receive any warning from him."
Meanwhile, the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated, in a statement, on Tuesday evening, that “the UAE government does not comment on reports or speculation published in the media regarding talks between government leaders.”
The UAE Foreign Ministry added in its statement: “Since October 7, the UAE’s efforts have focused on reducing escalation, enhancing regional stability, and reducing violence.”
She continued: "Government agencies in both the UAE and Israel, since the beginning of relations between the two countries more than 5 years ago, have maintained open and direct channels of communication. When needed, all relevant intelligence information has been and continues to be exchanged between the concerned authorities."
Accountability is an electoral issue
The report comes as Netanyahu's opponents seek to make accountability for the October 7 attack - the deadliest in Israel's history, which killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250 others to Gaza - a central issue in their election campaign.
Netanyahu has outlasted almost all members of Israel's top security leadership since the attack. Since then, the Minister of Defense, the Chief of General Staff, and the directors of Military Intelligence (Mossad) and the General Security Service (Shin Bet) have resigned, been dismissed, or had their terms expired.
Eisenkot, currently considered Netanyahu's leading rival in opinion polls, said the Haaretz report shows Netanyahu "blindly led Israel" toward the October 7 failures, and renewed his pledge to form a government investigation committee if elected.
Nearly three years after the attack, Netanyahu resisted demands from the families of the victims and survivors of the October 7 attacks to form an independent committee to investigate the security and intelligence failures that enabled Hamas to carry out the operation.
Instead, he and his associates promoted a narrative blaming security leaders for not waking him up on the night of the attack, despite intelligence indicators warning of an imminent Hamas attack.
His wife, Sara Netanyahu, suggested last month that Yair Golan — a retired major general and leader of the left-wing Democrats, who independently rushed to the Gaza border on October 7 to rescue survivors — had advance knowledge of the attack.
In an interview with pro-government Channel 14, she wondered how Golan was “prepared and ready” at dawn that day to head south, “while others, including the prime minister, did not know about it.”
Golan demanded an apology for what he described as a "hateful conspiracy theory" and said he would take legal action against her for defamation, describing the claim as part of Netanyahu's attempt to "rewrite" the events of October 7 and evade responsibility.
Following the Haaretz report, Golan wrote on the X platform that the prime minister's narrative "They didn't wake me up is over. He knew, and he was warned." He described the matter as "not an error in judgement, but willful and criminal negligence."
Hours later, the Democratic Party intensified its election campaign against Netanyahu, erecting a huge billboard on the main highway in Tel Aviv bearing the following title: “The 1,200 Dead Case - Causing Death by Negligence.”
