One week before the attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was explicitly warned by the President of the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed, that Hamas was preparing a major operation, according to an investigation published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Bin Zayed spoke directly with Netanyahu in a 45-minute phone call, during which he expressed his concern about an operation that, according to the information he had, was being prepared by Yahya Sinwar, then leader of the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza.
The call, whose existence had not been revealed until now, was confirmed by three senior foreign sources familiar with its content, according to journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, authors of an investigation conducted for the publication of the book Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment, published in Hebrew by the Kinneret Zmora publishing house.
The book reconstructs how this exchange between the two leaders was forged after an investigation based on “dozens of sources in Israel and around the world, including senior officials, as well as recordings, internal documents, and correspondence.”
Bin Zayed specified, always according to Haaretz’s information, that Sinwar was preparing an attack that would cause a great bloodshed, destabilize the Middle East region, and undermine the Abraham Accords between Israel and some Arab countries, including the Emirates.
A close advisor to Bin Zayed, a Palestinian who had emigrated years earlier from Gaza to Abu Dhabi and maintained strong ties with the Strip, was also present during the call.
According to the advisor, the emir stressed to Netanyahu the need to prepare for the threat: “He told Israel it had to be prepared. At the same time, he recommended seeking an economic solution for the Strip and calming the situation in the West Bank to avoid an escalation.”
The attacks carried out by Hamas that day in communities near the border caused at least 1,200 Israeli deaths and, in addition, 251 people were taken hostage and remained for months in the hands of the Islamists. Some of them died and more than 160 were released, according to Amnesty International, thanks to agreements between Hamas and the Israeli government and army operations.
Since then, Israeli forces have killed at least 73,000 Gazans, more than 20,000 of them minors, although there are hundreds of bodies under the rubble of Gaza. Since October, a truce has been in effect, although more than 1,300 Palestinians have died in Israeli attacks since that date, according to figures from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, taken as reference by the UN.
Solution for Gaza
Bin Zayed urged Netanyahu to take the situation “seriously,” but “to his surprise, however, the Israeli prime minister reacted with relative calm,” stating that “Hamas intended to operate in the West Bank” and assured Bin Zayed that Israel was “prepared for any scenario,” details the Haaretz article.
According to the journalists, Netanyahu did not convey that warning to the main Israeli security officials: neither the head of Shin Bet, nor the director of Mossad, nor the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces knew about Bin Zayed’s warning.
The Israeli government had been maintaining indirect contacts with Hamas for months to reach an agreement that, according to the information gathered by Eldar and Yuval, was in an advanced stage.
The pact contemplated progressively easing the blockade of Gaza, increasing the entry of food and raw materials, promoting economic projects — including the exploitation of the Gaza Marine natural gas field — and achieving the return of two Israelis and the bodies of two soldiers held in the Strip in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
At the end of August 2023, according to the sources cited in the investigation, only the approval of the ministerial committee in charge of hostages and missing persons in Israel remained. However, the Israeli prime minister repeatedly postponed the call. Sources cited by Haaretz point to possible reasons such as fear that the negotiations would leak to the press or the reaction of his far-right partners.
According to the Israeli newspaper, faced with the lack of progress in the talks between Hamas and the Israeli authorities, Sinwar began to show his frustration. His interlocutors tried to convince him that the delays were due to the internal political crisis Israel was going through because of the judicial reform and the massive protests against it.
At the beginning of September, Sinwar suddenly interrupted contacts and, shortly after, warned the intermediary responsible for transmitting his messages that he was preparing a huge surprise: a “zilzal,” an Arabic term meaning “earthquake.”
“Tell them I am preparing the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary (…) Tell the Israelis exactly what I am saying, word for word,” demanded Sinwar, also according to the Emirates advisor, cited by Haaretz.
The intermediary in charge of communications between Sinwar and Netanyahu’s government informed Bin Zayed of Sinwar’s warnings, which led the Emirati leader to contact Netanyahu directly and the CIA director at the time, William J. Burns.
The investigation cites a Shin Bet source who says that knowing Bin Zayed’s warning could have changed Israel’s assessment of the Hamas threat.
The publication of this exclusive comes just days after Netanyahu sparked a strong controversy in Israel by accusing senior military and security officials of “deliberately” deciding not to wake him up in the early hours of October 7, 2023, in statements that the opposition and security officials have described as an electoral “conspiracy theory.”
The dispute is also part of a broader clash that Netanyahu has been having for months with the judiciary and the opposition over how to investigate October 7: in a parliamentary debate held in November 2025, the prime minister already rejected the creation of an independent investigation commission and accused the media of acting in collusion with an alleged “deep state” fighting to dethrone him.
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