Egypt's then-intelligence chief Abbas Kamel secretly flew to Israel on September 26, 2023, 11 days before the October 7 massacre, and warned that Hamas appeared to be preparing a major attack, The Atlantic reported Friday night.
The report, by journalist Vivian Salama, cites Israeli, Egyptian, Arab, American and European officials who were briefed on the visit after the attack. According to a former Israeli official, Kamel's message was that if Israel did not change course, "Gaza is going to blow up in your faces." He urged Israel to take economic steps to ease tensions in the Strip.
Kamel did not give a date or specific details about the attack, and it is not clear which Israeli officials he met. According to Israel Airports Authority flight logs, the Egyptian plane stayed on the ground at Ben Gurion Airport for only 67 minutes before returning to Cairo. An Egyptian official told the magazine that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi believed the message had to be delivered in person.
About two hours after Kamel landed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at a ceremony in Jerusalem marking 50 years since the Yom Kippur War.
According to the report, Egyptian warnings continued until two days before the attack. On October 5, Egypt sent Israel another message warning that the situation in Gaza could not continue.
Israel has consistently rejected the claim. Days after the massacre, the Prime Minister's Office denied that Egypt had issued any warning. This week, according to The Atlantic, former National Security Council chief Tzachi Hanegbi denied that Kamel visited Israel and said Egypt did not warn Israel of the attack.
The officials who spoke to the magazine argued that the visit itself should have alerted Israel's leadership. A former Israeli official said there was no scenario in which senior Israeli officials would meet Egypt's intelligence chief without Netanyahu knowing.
Reports of an Egyptian warning first surfaced two days after the attack, when an Egyptian intelligence official told AP that Israel had been warned of "something big." After a classified briefing, then-House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Michael McCaul said Egypt had warned Israel three days before the attack.
The Atlantic report adds to a series of recent disclosures about the days before October 7. Earlier this month, Haaretz reported that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed called Netanyahu and warned him that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning a major operation. The New York Times reported this week that Netanyahu did not raise that warning at a security meeting he held with defense chiefs on October 1, 2023.
