Story by Jan Philipp Burgard
Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of ignoring warnings that could have prevented the Oct 7 massacre.
The Israeli prime minister was personally warned by Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), that Hamas was planning a major operation against Israel days before the attack, according to a new investigation.
It claims that Mr Netanyahu did not update Israeli security leaders and did nothing with the information he received about 10 days before the attack.
The accusations could prove poisonous for the prime minister’s re-election hopes when Israelis take to the polls on Oct 27, with families who lost loved ones in the attack telling The Telegraph that – if the reports were true – the blame for the massacre would lie with Mr Netanyahu.
Hamas and several other Palestinian terror groups breached the Gaza-Israel border fence on Oct 7, 2023 and killed about 1,200 people, while capturing a further 251. Israel responded with a large-scale military operation in Gaza, which is believed to have killed more than 80,000 people in the territory.
The conflict plunged the Middle East into a deeper crisis, harmed Israel’s relations with many of its Western allies and triggered a global surge in anti-Semitism.
“A week and a half before October 7, the Emir called Netanyahu from the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi and spoke with him for 45 minutes,” journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval write in the book Kidnapped: 843 Days of Abandonment, released on Tuesday.
“During that conversation, bin Zayed told Netanyahu that Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, was planning a major operation against Israel,” the book claims.
“The Emir expressed concern that such an event would not only result in bloodshed but would also shake the entire region and jeopardise the Abraham Accords.”
Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan warned of a major Hamas operation, a new book claims – Getty Images/Antonio Masiello
Mr Netanyahu is said to have reacted calmly, telling the Emir that he believed Hamas intended to operate in the West Bank and assuring him that Israel was prepared for any scenario.
The authors, whose findings have been published in advance by Haaretz, the Left-liberal Israeli newspaper and a fierce critic of Netanyahu, cite three senior foreign sources as well as an adviser to bin Zayed with direct knowledge of the conversation.
At around the same time, Mr Netanyahu’s office is also said to have received a warning from Gen Abbas Kamel, the then intelligence chief of Egypt, that Hamas was planning “something unusual, a terrible operation”.
Less than a week before the massacre, on Oct 1, Ronen Bar, the then head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, reportedly met Mr Netanyahu and recommended the targeted killing of Sinwar and several other senior Hamas figures.
According to a security source, Bar told the prime minister that Shin Bet had detected signs that Hamas was “preparing something extreme”. He is also said to have used the word “earthquake”.
Mr Netanyahu did not accept the recommendation to target Sinwar and other senior Hamas officials. Nor, according to the account, did he tell Mr Bar about the alleged warning from the UAE.
Israeli officials reportedly urged Netanyahu to target Yahya Sinwar in the days leading up to Oct 7 – AFP/Mohammed Abed
Mr Netanyahu’s office has categorically denied the book’s central claim. “An absolute lie!” it said in a statement. “Prime minister Netanyahu did not speak with the president of the UAE during the period in question and did not receive any warning from him.”
Nevertheless, the revelations have provoked outrage in Israel.
“It is very hard not to think about what might have been prevented,” Ruby Chen, the mother of a victim of Oct 7, told The Telegraph. “Given such information, at the very least precautionary measures could have been taken. What if there had been twice or three times as many soldiers there that morning? Perhaps there would have been far fewer casualties. Maybe my son would still be alive.”
Mrs Chen’s son, Itay, an Israeli-American soldier, was 19 when he was killed fighting Hamas terrorists on Oct 7. His body was taken into Gaza and was not returned to Israel until November 2025. His father is levelling serious accusations against Netanyahu’s administration.
“If this information did indeed reach the prime minister, why did he apparently fail to act on it?” Mrs Chen said. “Imagine you are driving your car, run a red light and kill someone. That is called negligence – and you can go to prison for it.” Mrs Chen has long campaigned for an independent state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding Oct 7.
Mr Netanyahu’s government has so far resisted establishing one.
“I am deeply disappointed by the thought that the prime minister may have reasons for not wanting the truth to come out through a commission of inquiry,” Mrs Chen said.
The claims come at a politically perilous moment for Mr Netanyahu.
Israelis go to the polls on Oct 27, and the failure to establish political accountability for the massacre remains an open wound for much of the country.
Opposition politicians have seized on the book.
“The report published this morning that Benjamin Netanyahu was warned 10 days before Oct 7 about Sinwar’s intentions is enormously disturbing,” Yonatan Shalev, a parliamentary candidate for the B’Yachad Party, told The Telegraph.
“If confirmed – former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, has already said he knows the report to be true – Netanyahu bears direct personal responsibility for ignoring a clear warning, failing to alert the security leadership and failing to prepare the country. Instead, his government continued its policy of buying temporary calm from Hamas while dismissing warning after warning and remaining captive to a devastating and dangerous conception.”
Smoke rises above Gaza City on Oct 7, 2023, following an Israeli air strike – AFP/Mahmud Hams
Gadi Eisenkot, the former Israeli military chief and Mr Netanyahu’s most formidable challenger in the election, also launched a direct attack on the prime minister.
“Netanyahu received dozens of warnings before Oct 7 and ignored every one of them,” Mr Eisenkot wrote on X. Yair Lapid, another former prime minister, accused Mr Netanyahu of failing to heed warnings from the UAE, Egypt and his own security establishment.
“His only response was going on Channel 14 to say that there was nothing to worry about,” Mr Lapid said. “If Netanyahu had done his job, the massacre would have been prevented.”
Families hold a vigil for people who were kidnapped by Hamas – Getty Images/Alexi J.Rosenfeld
But Danny Orbach, a military historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, cautioned against focusing solely on the prime minister.
“Netanyahu sits at the top of the system and therefore ultimately bears responsibility for its failures,” he said. “But Israel’s security establishment must also answer difficult questions.
“As for the various security agencies that allegedly warned Netanyahu, one question immediately arises: why did they not act on those warnings themselves?” Mr Orbach told The Telegraph.
“They did not need the prime minister’s permission to increase their own readiness or to re-examine their basic assumptions about Gaza. The fact is that they, too, were caught completely unprepared by the attack.”
The battle over who bears responsibility for Israel’s catastrophic security failure now has the potential to become one of the defining issues of the election.
A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that Oct 7 was among the issues most likely to influence how Jewish Israelis cast their ballot.
