The New York Times on Friday provided further details of the recent Haaretz report which stated that the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, secretly warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortly before October 7, 2023, that Hamas was considering a major attack.
Two people who spoke to The Times said they had either spoken with Sheikh Mohammed or been briefed by someone who participated in the conversation between the two leaders.
According to the report, Sheikh Mohammed contacted Netanyahu in late September 2023 after receiving information that Hamas was preparing an attack. One of the people said the intelligence did not establish whether the planned assault involved rocket fire or a ground invasion into Israel. The source of the information provided to the Emirati president remains unclear, as do the other subjects that may have been discussed during the call.
The warning apparently did not make its way to Israel’s senior security leadership. Five former senior Israeli officials told The Times that they were unaware of it reaching the country’s security establishment.
Netanyahu convened Israel’s security chiefs on October 1, 2023, for a discussion of the situation in Gaza, according to minutes reviewed by the newspaper. The minutes do not mention any warning from Sheikh Mohammed. Instead, Netanyahu said the priority should be preserving calm in Gaza.
The meeting also included discussion of possible Israeli strikes against senior Hamas figures responsible for attacks against Israelis in Judea and Samaria. According to the minutes, Netanyahu opposed such action, arguing that an Israeli military operation in Gaza could undermine the prospects of Saudi Arabia establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, a deal he believed was close to completion.
Following the publication of the Haaretz report, Netanyahu rejected the claim that he had received a warning directly from Sheikh Mohammed. His office said that any intelligence received from the UAE would have been transmitted through Israeli intelligence channels.
The UAE Foreign Ministry initially declined to comment on the Haaretz report. However, an official in the UAE later completely rejected the claim that intelligence information or any warning had been conveyed in a direct conversation between the two leaders.
Neither Netanyahu’s office nor the Emirati foreign ministry responded to The Times’ requests for comment.
The newspaper also reported that Sheikh Mohammed later referred to the September call during a conversation with William Burns, who was then director of the CIA. A person familiar with that discussion said the Emirati leader told Burns that he had warned Netanyahu about an impending threat of violence by Hamas in Judea and Samaria or the Gaza Strip.
The alleged call does not appear in internal investigations into the security failures surrounding October 7, according to the five former senior Israeli officials cited by The Times. Those officials participated in the investigations, which have not been fully released publicly.
All of the sources interviewed by The New York Times for the report spoke on condition of anonymity.
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Sukkot in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)