UAE president warned Netanyahu about Sinwar weeks before October 7, Haaretz reports
Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed passed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an explicit warning in late September 2023 that Yahya Sinwar intended to strike Israel, according to a report published Tuesday morning in Haaretz.
Bin Zayed told Netanyahu that Sinwar was planning a major move against Israel, the report said. Netanyahu did not pass the warning on to the heads of the defense establishment.
According to the report, bin Zayed pressed Netanyahu to take the matter seriously, and was surprised when the prime minister responded to the information with relative calm.
Netanyahu's office rejected the report outright. "A complete lie. 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," his office said.
Israel Hayom political commentator Shirit Avitan Cohen said the denial was not good enough. "The information that was available here on the eve of October 7, including a defense establishment discussion chaired by Netanyahu that led not to raising the alert level on the border but only to efforts to advance an arrangement, cannot be answered with Netanyahu's response that it's a lie. It simply can't."
"How did you not order a reinforcement of forces around the Strip when there was a defense establishment discussion and then a focused phone call on top of it?" she wrote. "This is the Gaza conception on steroids. And it is really not just Ronen Bar."
