A bombshell report published this week by Haaretz has reopened one of the most painful, and honestly most consequential, questions in modern Israeli history. Could October 7 have been prevented, or at least made less catastrophic, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had actually acted on a warning he allegedly received just days before the attack, and told the people whose literal job it was to stop something like this?
What the Investigation Found
The account comes from an investigation conducted for a forthcoming book, Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment, written by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval. According to it, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan called Netanyahu on a secure line roughly ten days before the October 7, 2023 attack. The call reportedly lasted 45 minutes. In it, bin Zayed warned that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was preparing a major operation against Israel, a warning that, notably, came after Sinwar had apparently told a mediator he was planning something he called an “earthquake.”
Netanyahu, according to three senior foreign sources cited by Haaretz, didn’t seem alarmed. He told bin Zayed he believed Hamas was more likely aiming to operate in the West Bank, not something on this scale, and assured the UAE leader that Israel was ready for whatever came. Here’s the part that’s really drawing scrutiny, though: Netanyahu reportedly never passed any of this along afterward. Not to the head of Shin Bet. Not to the Mossad chief. Not even to the IDF chief of staff. Both former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and former IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi told Haaretz, plainly, that they were never briefed on the call at all.
It Wasn’t the Only Warning, Either
And the UAE call wasn’t a one-off. Around the same period, Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel reportedly reached out to Netanyahu separately, warning of “something unusual, a terrifying operation” being planned by Hamas. Netanyahu gave more or less the same reassurance he’d given bin Zayed, that Israel had Gaza under control and was focused on the West Bank. There’s more, too. Intelligence that reached Shin Bet on September 15 apparently led Bar to warn Netanyahu two days later that Israel was “on a collision course,” urging either offensive action or reinforced defenses around Gaza and the West Bank. None of these separate threads, according to the investigation, were ever really connected or treated with the urgency the eventual scale of the attack would suggest they deserved.
Netanyahu’s Response: “An Absolute Lie”
Netanyahu’s office has flatly denied all of it. “Prime Minister Netanyahu didn’t speak to the president of the UAE during the period in question and received no warning from him,” his office said, calling the Haaretz report an “absolute lie.” Bin Zayed’s office, for what it’s worth, hasn’t responded to requests for comment either way.
What Others Are Saying
The reaction from Israel’s political world has been fast, and predictably split along familiar lines. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called the report “true,” accusing Netanyahu of “criminal negligence” for not acting on it. Amos Nadan, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, offered something a bit more careful but still pretty damning, he said that if a sufficiently clear warning had actually led Israel to reinforce its border defenses before October 7, it’s entirely plausible the scale of the disaster would have looked very different. There’s also a separate thread worth mentioning: leaked recordings of former IDF Military Intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, released by Channel 12, add another layer here. Haliva said Netanyahu showed little real interest in regular intelligence briefings before the war, describing meetings between the two that went from weekly, to monthly, to eventually just twice a year.
If True, Where Does This Leave Israeli Politics?
If this report holds up under further scrutiny, and that’s still a genuine if, the political consequences could run deep. Israel has already lived through years of public anger and mass protests demanding real accountability for the security failures of October 7, along with repeated calls for Netanyahu’s resignation and a formal state commission of inquiry, something his government has resisted setting up so far. Confirmed proof of a direct, explicit foreign warning that simply never made it to Israel’s security chiefs would hand critics exactly the kind of evidence they’ve been asking for not just an intelligence failure this time, but a failure of leadership and judgment at the very top. It would likely complicate Netanyahu’s political survival heading into future elections too, and it could reshape how historians eventually write the story of October 7, not as some unforeseeable catastrophe that came out of nowhere, but as one that arrived with warning bells already ringing, bells that simply went unanswered.
For now, though, the report remains contested, Netanyahu’s denial still stands, and the country is left waiting to see whether more evidence, or maybe finally an official inquiry, settles this question once and for all.
References
- Haaretz, “Revealed: Netanyahu Received an Explicit Warning Days Before Oct. 7. He Didn’t Brief Israel’s Security Chiefs,” September 8, 2026
- The Jerusalem Post, “UAE warned Benjamin Netanyahu over major Hamas attack days before October 7,” September 8, 2026
- i24NEWS, “Lawmakers react to new bombshell report that Netanyahu was warned about Oct. 7 attack plans,” September 8, 2026
