A Times corroboration, a contested Egyptian visit, and the risk of merging them
Three separate claims that Israel was warned before 7 October 2023 surfaced within a day of each other. They rest on very different evidence, and the Israeli press is already running them together.
Haaretz reported on 25 September, at 21:54 Israel time, that The New York Times had independently stood up its earlier story that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed warned Benjamin Netanyahu of an impending “major attack” by Hamas days before 7 October 2023. The Times spoke to two sources, one of whom had spoken directly with bin Zayed. That is the strongest strand of the three, and it is still anonymous on both outlets. A second strand, captured in a Times of Israel liveblog headline for the same day — “Despite pre-Oct. 7 warning, PM told aides striking Gaza could harm Saudi normalization talks — NYT” — carries the sharper allegation, that Netanyahu weighed a response against the Saudi track. That one reaches us only as a headline.
The third strand is the only one with a named Israeli official pushing back. The Atlantic reported a version involving then-Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel; per the Times of Israel liveblog of 26 September, the magazine said Netanyahu’s spokespeople did not respond to multiple requests for comment, while Tzachi Hanegbi, national security adviser on 7 October 2023, denied both that Kamel visited Israel on 26 September 2023 and that any Egyptian warning existed. The Prime Minister’s Office has previously denied that Kamel personally warned Netanyahu. Separately, Haaretz published on 25 September the account of Sufian Abu Zaida, a former senior Fatah official who mediated between Israel and Hamas before the attack and says he warned of it, that Israeli military and intelligence services knew what was coming — his recollection, reported as such.
Assessment: The political value of these three items lies in their conflation, and both camps have an interest in it. A denial that fits the Egyptian strand does not touch the Emirati one, and a corroborated warning says nothing on its own about what was done with it — the motive claim, which is the damaging part, is the least supported. Watch for the Saudi-normalisation line migrating from a liveblog headline into settled fact before anyone reads the underlying Times piece. Note too the direction of travel: on 1 September Netanyahu posted a video clarifying that he accused security chiefs of “failure”, not “betrayal”. The warnings story moves the question back up the chain, a month before a vote.