Intelligence failures rarely stem from a total lack of data. Instead, they usually happen because leaders refuse to listen to the signals right in front of them. A bombshell investigative report published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reveals that United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) placed a direct phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu roughly ten days before the October 7, 2023 attacks. The message was blunt: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was preparing an earthquake-scale operation, and Israel needed to wake up.
Netanyahu allegedly brushed it off.
If true, this alters the entire historical timeline of the worst security failure in modern Israeli history. It moves the conversation away from missing tactical clues and points squarely at a failure of political leadership at the very top.
The Anatomy of a Dismissed Warning
According to the investigative reporting, which draws on details from a forthcoming book titled Kidnapped: 843 Days of Abandonment, the intelligence pipeline started months earlier. In September 2023, Yahya Sinwar grew furious over stalled prisoner swap negotiations. Through a Palestinian intermediary with ties to both Hamas and regional figures, Sinwar warned that he was preparing a massive surprise, using the Arabic word zilzal, meaning earthquake.
That alarming threat made its way to Emirati leadership. Recognizing the explosive regional stakes—including the potential collapse of the Abraham Accords and catastrophic bloodshed—MBZ decided to bypass traditional bureaucratic channels. He called Netanyahu directly for a 45-minute conversation.
The UAE president laid out his assessment that Sinwar was planning a major offensive. He urged Netanyahu to take immediate precautions and address simmering economic pressures in Gaza and the West Bank.
How did Netanyahu respond? With a calm shrug.
He reportedly told the Emirati leader that Israel had Gaza completely under control. He insisted that any real threat would come from the West Bank, assuring MBZ that the military was well-prepared for any scenario. Worse still, Netanyahu did not brief his own defense establishment. Top security chiefs—including the heads of the Shin Bet and Mossad, alongside the IDF chief of staff—remained entirely in the dark about the warning from Abu Dhabi.
A Chorus of Ignored Alarms
The UAE wasn't the only regional player shouting from the rooftops. Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel delivered a strikingly similar warning around the same time. Kamel told Netanyahu that Hamas was staging something unusual and terrifying. Netanyahu offered the exact same dismissive reply, claiming security forces had Gaza locked down while shifting focus entirely toward the West Bank.
Senior intelligence officials interviewed for the report noted that learning about these specific warnings would have fundamentally changed how they interpreted incoming data. Shin Bet officers admitted that knowing about Sinwar’s direct threats via regional intermediaries would have forced them to connect dots they otherwise missed. It could have clarified why Sinwar suddenly backed away from de-escalation talks in early September 2023, exposing his true intentions.
Instead, a rigid institutional mindset took over. Leaders convinced themselves that Hamas was deterred, contained, and uninterested in a full-scale war.
The Political Aftermath and Denial
Predictably, the fallout has triggered fierce political shockwaves.
Netanyahu’s office slammed the report, issuing a flat denial labeling the claims an absolute lie and maintaining that no such phone call took place during that timeframe. On the other side of the political aisle, high-profile rivals pounced. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett publicly stated that he knew for a fact the report was true, declaring that Netanyahu bears direct personal responsibility for the disaster. Former military commander and political opponent Gadi Eisenkot echoed those sentiments, arguing that Netanyahu routinely ignored dozens of warnings and remains unfit to lead.
This revelation strips away any remaining defense that the political echelon was completely blind. Intelligence was flowing from international allies who had their own high-level channels into Gaza. When foreign leaders take the unprecedented step of calling a prime minister directly to warn of an imminent catastrophe, ignoring them crosses the line from a tragic intelligence miss into active negligence.
Accountability cannot rest solely on frontline soldiers or intelligence analysts monitoring border cameras. The ultimate burden falls on the desk where warnings arrive and get thrown away.
