Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 29 September that Israel has indications its enemies will try to attack before the 27 October Knesset election, without naming an attacker or describing the intelligence.
Netanyahu made the claim in a video filmed at Tel Nof air base and released by his office, 28 days before the vote. "We have indications that ahead of the elections our enemies will try to attack us," he said. He gave no detail on where the intelligence came from, how specific it was or when an attack might come, and warned Israel's adversaries that its forces could reach them anywhere and at any time.
Gadi Eisenkot, the former military chief of staff who leads the Yashar list, said opposition leader Yair Lapid should receive an immediate intelligence briefing if the threat is real, and that a briefing would establish whether the warning reflected a genuine threat or a campaign move. "It is absolutely forbidden to mix Israel's security and the election campaign," Eisenkot said.
Netanyahu told the newspaper Makor Rishon, in an interview published on 25 September, that Hamas could fire rockets or drones from Gaza on the eve of the vote to disrupt it. He said in the same interview that Gaza was no longer a real threat to Israel.
About three weeks before the Tel Nof video, Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting that Israel's enemies were weaker than ever and that Iran was refraining from attacking, Ynet wrote.
Netanyahu also said in the Tel Nof video that Israeli forces had killed the Hamas commander for northern Gaza overnight and had killed more than 100 people he called terrorists in Gaza in recent weeks. Israel has carried out near-daily strikes on Hamas commanders despite the US-backed Gaza ceasefire, the Long War Journal wrote.
The New York Times wrote on 25 September that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed warned Netanyahu in September 2023 that Hamas was planning an attack, backing an 8 September Haaretz report. Netanyahu denies receiving the warning.
Abbas Kamel, then director of Egypt's General Intelligence Service, telephoned Netanyahu's office in early October 2023 to warn that an attack from Gaza appeared to be coming, officials in an Arab government said in an account published by The Wall Street Journal on 27 September. Kamel had flown to Israel on 26 September 2023, 11 days before the attack, and told Israeli officials that Gaza was "going to blow up in your faces" if Israel did not change course, people familiar with the meeting said. None of the Egyptian warnings gave a date or described the scale of what Hamas was preparing, the officials said.
Netanyahu's office said on 28 September that "in the months preceding October 7, Prime Minister Netanyahu did not meet or speak with Abbas Kamel" and that he had instructed lawyers to file a libel suit over the report. Netanyahu wrote on X the same day that "foreign and hostile states", including Arab countries, stood behind "false blood libels" against him. Egypt's foreign ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the account.
The 27 October vote is Israel's first national election since the 7 October 2023 attack. Eisenkot said on 26 September that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah had been defeated despite Netanyahu's promises of total victory, the Times of Israel wrote.
Protesters outside the Knesset on 17 September accused political leaders of escalating regional tension to create a pretext for delaying the vote.
