Netanyahu denies being warned of impending Hamas attack 10 days before October 7

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is threatening to sue one of his country’s newspapers, after it reported he was warned of Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023, attacks more than a week before they were launched.

On Tuesday, newspaper Haaretz published a report detailing a conversation between Mr Netanyahu and United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed 10 days before October 7, in which the sheikh warned him that Hamas was planning an imminent attack.

Sheikh bin Zayed said it would lead to bloodshed and could destabilise the region and undermine the Abraham Accords, the normalisation agreements between Israel and several Arab and Muslim-majority nations, the newspaper reported. Haaretz said that warning was not passed on to Israeli defence or intelligence officials.

Netanyahu rejected the report as a lie, saying there was no phone call with the Emirati president at any point in September or early October 2023 and that it was an attempt to smear him before the Israeli election next month. His lawyers have written to the newspaper threatening a libel suit, but Haaretz insists it stands by its reporting.

The United Arab Emirates’ Foreign Ministry also said that it would not comment on “speculation regarding conversations between government leaders”.