Haaretz reports that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call over a week and a half before the October 7, 2023 attack that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning an escalation that could destabilize the region. Three sources confirmed the call's details. According to the report, Netanyahu responded that Israel was 'prepared for any scenario' but assessed Hamas would operate mainly in the West Bank, and the heads of the Shin Bet, Mossad, and IDF were not briefed on the warning.
The latest development in a story that has unfolded through the day: Haaretz is now reporting, on the word of three sources who confirmed the details of the call, that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call ten days before the October 7, 2023, massacre that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning an escalation that could destabilize the region. According to the report, Netanyahu replied that Israel was 'prepared for any scenario' but assessed that Hamas would operate mainly in Judea and Samaria; the heads of the Shin Bet, Mossad, and the IDF, it says, were not briefed on the warning. The publication is the latest in a sequence The Zioneer has tracked since 08:30 this morning.
The thread has developed rapidly since morning. At 08:30, The Zioneer reported Channel 12's Yaron Avraham: the intelligence on Sinwar's warning days before the attack — that 'the prisons in Israel will soon shake' — originated with bin Zayed; it was initially read as hostage-deal-related, not as an invasion warning, and was classified as highly sensitive. At 10:25, The Zioneer published Haaretz's investigation alleging bin Zayed warned Netanyahu of a major Sinwar operation ten days before the massacre, and that Netanyahu concealed it from Israel's security chiefs — a claim the Prime Minister's Office dismissed as an 'absolute lie.' At 12:52, journalist Mendi Asraf, citing a senior official in Netanyahu's circle who reviewed the call transcripts, reported that the last pre-October 7 Netanyahu–bin Zayed call took place in early 2023, with a second call a week after the massacre — directly contradicting Haaretz's account.
The report also sits against the strategic relationship bin Zayed built with Israel. As The Zioneer's archive records, he was the architect of the 2020 Abraham Accords and of a 'stability-first' regional policy, with reported operational cooperation that included Israeli air defense deployed on Emirati soil during the direct escalation with Iran. It also feeds the public reckoning over the war's outbreak: on September 1, The Zioneer reported Netanyahu's claim that defense officials deliberately chose not to wake him on the morning of October 7.
What remains open: the account is disputed. The Prime Minister's Office called Haaretz's allegation an 'absolute lie,' and the senior source cited by Asraf — who said he reviewed the call transcripts — contradicts the report's timing and its core claim that a warning call took place before October 7. Even the intelligence attributed to bin Zayed — Sinwar's 'the prisons in Israel will soon shake' — was first read as hostage-deal-related. Whether the warning reached Netanyahu, and whether Israel's security chiefs were left in the dark, remains unverified; the new report rests on three unnamed sources, and the two sides offer irreconcilable versions.
6 developments
- StrongLapid says Netanyahu dismissed UAE, Egypt and security chiefs' warnings before Oct. 7 massacre
- ConfirmedPre-October 7 discussion participants break silence, claim no one knew of UAE message
- StrongMendi Asraf: Senior source says last Netanyahu-UAE president call before Oct 7 was in early 2023
- DevelopingSocial media commentary: Islamic Jihad rally six days before October 7 was ignored, writer claims
Source and signal
- Open-source intake