UAE confirms Netanyahu’s Abu Dhabi visit a day late, and two accounts of its purpose survive

Israel Hayom reported on Sunday 27 September that Benjamin Netanyahu flew to the United Arab Emirates that morning, stayed through the day, and met President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi; when the trip first broke, the Prime Minister’s Office declined to describe the substance of the meetings. Reuters, carried by U.S. News, reported the visit the same day on the word of a single senior Israeli official, with no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office or the Emirati foreign ministry. Confirmation came from the Emirati side late on Monday, a day after the fact, and it was minimal: the state news agency WAM said only that “the two sides discussed bilateral relations between the UAE and Israel and ways to strengthen and develop them.” Al Jazeera noted the meeting had already been reported in the Israeli press.

The purpose is where the record splits. The Associated Press, relayed by Israel Hayom and the Manila Times, reported that Netanyahu travelled to ask the Emirati president to publicly deny reports that he had warned the Israeli prime minister of a looming Hamas operation before 7 October 2023 — the warning Haaretz reported earlier this month as having been passed about a week and a half before the attack, in which Palestinian fighters killed at least 1,195 people in southern Israel. Kan, the public broadcaster, reported something else: that Netanyahu also met senior officials from several Middle Eastern states, including some without relations with Israel, to discuss Iran. Kan’s hard detail is aircraft — a Libyan government plane, a Moroccan Hercules, a Qatari military plane and an Emirati government aircraft arriving from Riyadh — and its report was cleared by the military censor.

Both accounts can be true at once; neither should be folded into the other. The Israeli press review is the story here: the fact of the trip came from an Israeli official, the least informative version came from WAM, and the most geopolitically ambitious version came from a state broadcaster with a censor stamp on it.

Assessment: Censor clearance is disclosed information, not inference: somebody in Jerusalem wanted the Iran session in print four weeks before the 27 October election, which is a reason to read Kan’s framing — “officials from countries without ties to Israel” — as the softest part of an otherwise concrete item. The plane-spotting is verifiable; the guest list is characterisation. The Emirati silence until Monday night, then a single sentence about bilateral relations, is itself an answer to the AP’s version: Abu Dhabi declined to issue the denial while declining to confirm it was asked. One thread we could not stand up: a Jerusalem Post live-updates headline referencing a lawsuit over Channel 12’s reporting of the meeting. Who filed, on what grounds, in which court — unknown, and unpublishable until it is.