Netanyahu Accused of Ignoring UAE Warning About Hamas Attack
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under a storm of criticism following a report that the United Arab Emirates warned him about the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack, only for the warning to be ignored. Israeli opposition leaders say Netanyahu is unfit to remain in office.
A report by the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz, carried by AFP on Tuesday (8/9/2026), revealed that UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan had spoken with Netanyahu roughly a week and a half before the attack and told him that Hamas was planning a large-scale operation.
The Haaretz report was based on testimony from sources, most of them unnamed, and on excerpts from a book written by one of its journalists, which is due to be published soon.
Netanyahu’s office called the media report an “absolute lie” and denied that the Israeli prime minister had spoken with the UAE leader at that time.
Opposition figures, however, lined up to condemn Netanyahu, among them Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israeli military commander who is now Netanyahu’s main rival in the upcoming 27 October election.
Eisenkot accused Netanyahu of evading responsibility for the security failure and of offering “pathetic” excuses, such as the claim that he was not woken early enough on the morning of the attack.
“Netanyahu received dozens of warnings about the 7 October attack and ignored them all. He is unfit to hold office,” Eisenkot declared in a post on the social media platform X.
Criticism also came from Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister who is also running in the upcoming election. Bennett said Netanyahu bore “personal and direct responsibility” for the deaths caused by the 7 October attack, the deadliest in Israel’s history.
“Netanyahu must not remain in that post for even one more minute,” Bennett said.
In its report, Haaretz said the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israel, had once warned a former Palestinian official that the militant group was preparing a “horrifying operation”, which he described as an “earthquake”.
According to Haaretz, the former Palestinian official passed the message to a UAE adviser, who then relayed it to the UAE leader, who in turn contacted Netanyahu. The Haaretz report said Netanyahu responded to the warning calmly.
The UAE has not yet responded directly to the report.
The UAE normalised relations with Israel in 2020 as part of the Abraham Accords, brokered by the United States during Donald Trump’s first term as US president. Netanyahu regards close ties with the UAE as a significant achievement.