The Brief

Haaretz says the UAE warned Netanyahu ten days before October 7. He is suing them for saying it.

The report says Mohammed bin Zayed called Netanyahu directly and told him Hamas was planning something big, and that Netanyahu told none of his security chiefs. Netanyahu calls it an absolute lie and has instructed his lawyers. Israel votes on October 27.
Sep 11, 2026 · World

On September 9, Haaretz published an investigation by Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yaval, drawn from a forthcoming book. It reports that about ten days before October 7, 2023, the president of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed, telephoned Benjamin Netanyahu and warned him that Hamas was preparing a major operation.

The call ran roughly forty-five minutes, according to The Times of Israel. MBZ's aides had read Yahya Sinwar's messaging as the signal of an imminent full-scale attack, and MBZ raised it with Netanyahu himself. Netanyahu, per the report, reassured him, and said his own assessment was that Hamas was focused on the West Bank.

Kobi Gideon / Israeli Government Press Office ·

The Jerusalem Post reports what happened next: nothing. Netanyahu did not brief the defense minister. He did not brief the IDF chief of staff, Herzi Halevi. He did not brief the Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar. He did not brief the Mossad.

Zeev Stein / PikiWiki Israel ·

That is the allegation. Here is where the evidence actually stands.

The UAE's foreign ministry will not confirm it and will not deny it. Its statement: "the UAE government does not comment on media stories or speculation regarding conversations between government leaders."

An Emirati source familiar with the conversation did confirm the Haaretz report to The Times of Israel later that Tuesday, and said the warning came during a phone call between the two leaders.

Netanyahu's office denies the whole thing. Its statement says he "did not speak with the president of the United Arab Emirates during the period in question and did not receive any warning from him." It calls the report an absolute lie and, in the version CBS News carried, "a malicious libel with clear political timing, as part of the left's election campaign." The office says a review of his call logs and the Prime Minister's Office visitor records turned up no contact with the UAE in that window.

Naftali Bennett, who is running against him, went the other way. He wrote publicly that he believes the Haaretz report is authentic, and called the failure to act criminal negligence.

Netanyahu has instructed his lawyers to file a libel suit against Haaretz and against both reporters. Haaretz says it stands by the reporting.

Israel's legislative elections are on October 27, 2026.

Every version of this story rests on something no outsider has seen. The UAE will not say whether the call happened. Netanyahu says his own records show it did not. Haaretz says its sources say it did. The proof, if it exists, is in phone records held by the two governments with the most to lose from producing them.

So the question in front of anyone reading it is not which side sounds more convincing. It is which of two things is easier to believe: that two reporters and a book publisher fabricated a head-of-state phone call weeks before an election, or that a prime minister who was warned did not want it written down.

By the numbers

The reporting

This story is built on reporting by Al Jazeera. Read the original →

Sources

Image credits

Citations

  1. Al Jazeera
  2. The Times of Israel
  3. The Jerusalem Post
  4. Haaretz
  5. Haaretz
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