Haaretz reported on 8 September 2026 that Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan telephoned Benjamin Netanyahu from the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi a week and a half before 7 October 2023 and spoke to him for 45 minutes. The president of the United Arab Emirates told the Israeli prime minister that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, was preparing a major operation against Israel, that it would cause bloodshed, that it would destabilise the region and that it could wreck the Abraham Accords. Netanyahu answered that his government had Gaza in hand, that any Hamas move was more likely to come in the West Bank and that Israel was ready for any scenario. He did not tell Ronen Bar, head of the Shin Bet. He did not tell Herzi Halevi, chief of the general staff. He did not tell David Barnea, head of the Mossad. He did not convene the cabinet.

Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval published that account in Haaretz on 8 September 2026, drawn from their book on the hostages and the 843 days between the attack and the return of the last body from Gaza in January 2026. Kinneret Zmora is publishing it in Hebrew, under a title rendered in English coverage as both "Kidnapped: 843 Days of Abandonment" and "Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment". The authors interviewed dozens of sources including senior officials in Israel and abroad. Three senior foreign officials were briefed on the contents of the 45-minute call, they wrote. Their principal witness to the conversation is a Palestinian adviser to bin Zayed who emigrated from Gaza to the United Arab Emirates and who was present.

Netanyahu's office called the report "a total lie" on the evening of 8 September 2026. "Prime Minister Netanyahu did not speak with the president of the United Arab Emirates during the period in question and received no warning from him," it said. A later statement the same evening shifted the ground slightly: "The press reports are false. No warning was given to the Prime Minister from the United Arab Emirates before October 7. If there was any relevant information, it was passed through intelligence channels between the two countries." Netanyahu is now threatening to sue Haaretz.

The deal that was nearly done

Prisoner talks between Israel and Hamas began in 2023 over Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, two Israeli civilians who walked into Gaza of their own accord, and over the bodies of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, two soldiers killed in 2014. Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas political bureau who speaks Hebrew, carried messages for Sinwar. A senior Fatah figure, whom Haaretz identifies by the nickname Coal Eyes, carried them onward, an arrangement designed to make it look as though Israel and Hamas were not talking directly.

Middle East Eye named Coal Eyes on 8 September 2026 as Sufyan Abu Zayda, born in Jabalia refugee camp in 1960, jailed in Israel from 1981 to 1993, spokesman for the Palestinian prisoners during those years and later minister for prisoner affairs and for civil affairs in the Palestinian Authority from February 2005. Abu Zayda speaks fluent Hebrew and has kept channels open to Israeli officials for decades. Haaretz did not name him.

Hamad and Coal Eyes sat together in the Gaza home of a former Palestinian Authority official while a Shin Bet officer joined by telephone, according to the book. Talks that were formally indirect were in practice, in the authors' word, virtually direct, and they turned on easing the blockade of Gaza and improving conditions in the territory.

Sinwar dropped his demand for the release of 500 prisoners and came down to 50 by the summer of 2023. The Shin Bet was leaning towards 30, of whom 20 were serving life sentences. Netanyahu approved that number. A Hamas official involved in the contacts said Coal Eyes would come out of the meetings optimistic.

Netanyahu then declined to convene the ministerial committee for hostages and missing persons, the body that had to sign off on any prisoner release, and kept declining, according to an Israeli security source cited by Haaretz. Shin Bet officials running the talks said he would raise the risk of leaks to the press. Haaretz put his reluctance down to fear of being seen to deal with Hamas and of the reaction from the hardline members of his coalition.

Sinwar cut contact with the negotiators in early September 2023. "He vanished from our radar, evaporated," a senior Shin Bet official told the authors.

Zilzal

Sinwar met Coal Eyes twice in private after breaking off the talks. "Tell the Israelis if they don't advance, I'm preparing a huge surprise for them," he said at the first meeting, according to the book. "Tell them to expect a zilzal, an earthquake."

Coal Eyes came out of that meeting agitated, bin Zayed's Palestinian adviser told the authors. "It was clear to him that the operation Sinwar was talking about could affect the entire Middle East, but he was afraid to report the information directly to the Shin Bet. On the other hand, he was even more terrified that if he didn't update the Shin Bet, the Israelis might accuse him of collaborating with Sinwar. He genuinely feared for his life. Therefore, he decided to convey the message to Bin Zayed," Eldar and Yuval wrote.

Bin Zayed asked his adviser what Sinwar meant by zilzal. "If he says zilzal, he means war," the adviser said, describing it as his own reading and that of Coal Eyes. "If we are not sure, we will not convey any warning to the Israelis for now. We will investigate the matter thoroughly until we are certain," bin Zayed said.

Sinwar summoned Coal Eyes again in mid-September and told him he was preparing "a formidable operation". Coal Eyes admitted he had not passed on what had been said at the first meeting. Sinwar then demanded that he transmit a fuller message: he was readying "the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary". He used the word zilzal again.

Bin Zayed took the second message to mean Hamas intended to start a war.

Coal Eyes and the Emirati adviser did pass the warning directly to the Shin Bet in mid-September 2023, according to Haaretz. Israeli security officials discussed it over the following days, did not read it as a threat of an assault out of Gaza and reached no decisions.

"Why did Sinwar send us a warning?" a senior intelligence official asked afterwards, in the account given to the authors. "Either it was because he grew tired of Israel's foot-dragging, wanting to pressure us into an arrangement and not so eager to start a war. Or, as we prefer to think, it was part of his 'Great Deception' plan, and he wanted to test the IDF's readiness."

The call

Bin Zayed was troubled enough by the absence of any Israeli reaction to telephone Netanyahu himself. His adviser was in the room.

"The emir explained that, in his assessment, Sinwar was preparing for a major event," the adviser said. "He told Netanyahu that Israel should be ready. Concurrently, he recommended trying to find an economic solution for the Strip and calming the West Bank to prevent escalation."

Netanyahu's answer surprised him. The Israeli prime minister was calm, said his government was on top of things in Gaza, said any Hamas action was likely to come in the West Bank and said Israel was prepared for any scenario, according to the account. Bin Zayed came off the call hoping that Netanyahu would act on the warning despite the tone of his response.

Bin Zayed also told William Burns, then director of the CIA, that he had tried to convince Netanyahu that "something there is about to explode".

Abbas Kamel, then head of Egyptian intelligence, telephoned Netanyahu about 10 days before the attack and said Gazans were likely to attempt "something unusual, a terrible operation". Ynet reported that call days after the massacre. Netanyahu denied it then.

Ronen Bar came back to Netanyahu on 1 October 2023 with a proposal for offensive action against Hamas, including killing senior figures. Netanyahu made no decision, saying the Shin Bet should present its proposals and he would consider them. He said nothing about bin Zayed.

What the security establishment says it lost

"If we had known about the warnings, there's a chance it would have given much greater weight to the initial message that reached us from Sinwar," a senior Shin Bet official told Haaretz. "Perhaps it would have also clarified what was behind his sudden withdrawal from the de-escalation talks in early September. It's possible we would have put two and two together and reached a completely different conclusion from the one we arrived at, one that might have altered our entire intelligence picture."

Senior Israeli officials who sat in the security discussions before the attack told Channel 12 the same thing. "If we had known about Netanyahu's conversations with the Emiratis, and apparently also with the Egyptians, there is a considerable likelihood that we would have reached different conclusions," one said, calling the warning critical. "Had we known, we would at the very least have examined the matter more deeply," another said.

Mohammed Dahlan, the former Fatah security chief in Gaza who now lives in the United Arab Emirates, told a close associate days after the attack: "We passed warnings on to the Israelis. They did nothing with them." Channel 12 reported the remark.

The denial, the suit and the demand for a criminal investigation

Netanyahu's office widened its denial on 9 September 2026. No conversation of any kind took place between the prime minister and the Emirati president from the start of September 2023 until 7 October, it said. The Prime Minister's Office, the National Security Council and the military secretariat had each checked their call records and "they found no trace of it whatsoever". Diplomatic calls run on encrypted equipment and are documented in full, the office said, and no Emirati representative entered the Prime Minister's Office during the period. None of the three bodies has published its records.

Netanyahu instructed his lawyers the same day to sue. "The prime minister has instructed his lawyers to file a libel suit against the leftist newspaper Haaretz, Shlomi Eldar, and additional parties who concocted a false libel," his office said, calling the report a malicious fabrication with a clear political timing.

Haaretz said it stands by its reporting. The paper and its journalists said the investigation rested on numerous sources, documents and other materials.

Likud demanded on the evening of 9 September 2026 that the police open criminal investigations into Eldar, into Yuval, into Haaretz, into Yair Golan and into the Democrats party, over what it called suspected efforts to disrupt the elections with foreign actors.

Likud names Dahlan

Likud said the real story was foreign interference in the Israeli election. Dahlan supplied the information to the reporters, the party said, because he wants Netanyahu's government replaced by one that would withdraw from Gaza and wants control of Gaza himself. It produced no evidence.

Likud also said Eldar had been paid by a left-wing non-profit organisation linked to Golan's Democrats party in order to spread false allegations, and asked whether a reported secret visit to the United Arab Emirates by Golan and by Ronen Bar about two months earlier was connected to the publication. It offered no evidence linking any payment or any visit to the report.

Dahlan's movement called the accusations "a ridiculous and misleading incitement campaign".

Mark Levin, a US broadcaster and author, wrote that the allegation rests on three anonymous foreign senior sources in a book released weeks before the election of 27 October 2026, that no Israeli outlet reported such a warning at the time and that the affair is a well-organised and well-timed political ambush.

Corroboration on the record

An Emirati source familiar with the conversation confirmed to The Times of Israel on 8 September 2026 that bin Zayed telephoned Netanyahu and warned him Hamas was planning a major attack. Jacob Magid reported the confirmation.

The UAE foreign ministry declined to address the specific claim. "The UAE does not comment on media stories or speculation regarding conversations between government leaders," it said. It added: "UAE and Israeli government entities have maintained open and direct lines of communication since the inception of the relationship more than five years ago. When necessary, all relevant intelligence has been and continues to be communicated between the relevant parties." Bin Zayed himself said nothing.

Naftali Bennett, prime minister from June 2021 to June 2022 and now leader of B'Yachad, said on X that the report is correct. "The report published this morning that Netanyahu was warned 10 days before the October 7 massacre about Sinwar's intentions is true," he wrote. "Netanyahu bears personal and direct responsibility for the failure that led to the deaths of thousands of Israelis on his watch." Bennett did not say how he knew.

Bennett said Netanyahu's "disregard for the warnings amounts to criminal negligence, which is why he is doing everything he can to prevent the establishment of a state commission of inquiry that would expose the truth". He added: "He did not go down to the field. He did not alert the heads of the security establishment. He did not prepare Israel for an attack. And he did not convene the cabinet."

"What did he do in those days?" Bennett wrote. "He kept Hamas well supplied to stop the demonstrations it was allowing along the border fence, transferred additional funds to buy a little quiet, promised additional work permits for Palestinian workers in response to Hamas threats, and, as usual, dismissed all the warnings from the heads of the security establishment."

Ronen Bar and Herzi Halevi told Haaretz they had not been informed of bin Zayed's warning.

The hostage offer Blinken says never happened

Hamas conveyed through Qatari mediators on 7 October 2023 itself that it would return all the civilians it had seized and ask for nothing in exchange, requesting only that a mediator arrange the transfer and open a channel for later talks about captured soldiers, according to the same investigation. Israel refused to discuss the proposal or hear its details. Qatari officials took the offer to Antony Blinken, then secretary of state, and pressed him to move immediately. Blinken replied that the situation was complicated, that Israel was still under attack, that there was no one to talk to and that they would wait three days, the account said.

Blinken rejected it on 9 September 2026. "For the record, this is false. Complete fiction," he wrote.

What Netanyahu has said about warnings before

Netanyahu wrote on 28 October 2023 that "at no time and no stage was a warning given to Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding war intentions of Hamas", and that security officials had assessed Hamas to be deterred and interested in an arrangement. He deleted the post the next day after criticism from his own coalition as well as the opposition. "Things I said ... should not have been said and I apologize for that," he wrote. "I give full backing to all the heads of the security branches."

Netanyahu denounced Israel's security chiefs in the first week of September 2026 for choosing not to wake him in the hours before the attack, saying that "all the signs were there" that Hamas was about to invade and that he would have mobilised the army and taken the other steps needed to ensure 7 October "would not have taken place".

Channel 12 reported on 5 September 2026 that Netanyahu was told by his military secretary at 6.29am on 7 October 2023 that Hamas was attacking, left his home in Caesarea at 7.30am according to his own published schedule and did not contact Halevi or Bar in that time or on the way to the Kirya. His office put his arrival at 8am. Shin Bet records put it at 8.22am. Unpublished minutes from the Prime Minister's Office diary put it at 9am, and a source told Channel 12 the real time was 9.30am. His first meeting with Halevi was at 9.45am. He ordered full mobilisation and the sealing of the Gaza border at 9.55am.

Sara Netanyahu suggested in a broadcast interview on 31 August 2026, without evidence, that Yair Golan had advance knowledge of the attack, citing how quickly he reached the Nova festival site. Golan arrived at about 8am, roughly an hour and a half after the attack began, and evacuated wounded people. He said he would sue her. The Democrats called her remarks slanderous and lying and said they crossed a red line bordering on insanity. Eisenkot called it an outrageous conspiracy theory designed to fan hatred. Bennett called the allegations sick, false and dangerous.

The warnings already on the record

Ronen Bar delivered what he called a war warning to Netanyahu on 24 July 2023, the day of the Knesset vote on the reasonableness clause. "I can't give you a day or an hour, but this is the alert," Bar said. He asked to brief the opposition leader Yair Lapid as well, and Netanyahu agreed.

Four letters from the military intelligence directorate between March and July 2023, obtained by the Israeli non-profit organisation Hatzlaha under freedom of information, recorded how Israel's enemies read the harm to national cohesion caused by the judicial overhaul. The same documents assessed that Hamas intended to keep Gaza on the back burner, and a paper dated 31 May 2023 recommended regional de-escalation and movement towards an arrangement with Gaza. Netanyahu's office has cited those assessments as proof that no warning of a Gaza attack existed.

Egyptian officials visited the Israeli foreign ministry about two weeks before 7 October 2023 and said the situation in Gaza was explosive and that everything could blow up, according to reporting published in December 2025. Israeli officials answered that everything was under control and that an arrangement was near. A plane linked to Egyptian intelligence landed in an isolated area of Ben Gurion airport on 26 September 2023 and left shortly afterwards. The foreign ministry said no such meeting took place. The National Security Council denied receiving warnings of any kind and said it had no knowledge of any Egyptian plane. Army Radio reported on 9 September 2026 that Egyptian officials had told the Shin Bet before the attack that Hamas wanted to make the ground in Gaza tremble.

Aharon Haliva, head of military intelligence on 7 October 2023, said in a recording published in 2026 that Netanyahu ignored warnings before the attack.

The inquiry that has not been held

Israel has held no state commission of inquiry into 7 October 2023, almost three years after Hamas killed about 1,200 people, wounded 3,000 and took 251 hostages, 44 of whom were already dead.

A seven-justice panel of the High Court of Justice declined on 27 April 2026 to order a state commission, giving the government until 1 July 2026 to find a suitable arrangement of its own. The government told the court in July 2026 that it should not have to establish one before the election, arguing that the way the events are investigated sits at the heart of a political argument between the parties standing for election.

The Knesset passed a bill in its first reading on 7 July 2026, by 59 votes to nil with the opposition boycotting, creating a politically appointed commission instead. Six members would be chosen by a supermajority of 80 of the 120 members, and if no agreement were reached within two weeks each side would name three members, with four supervisory representatives drawn from bereaved families. The commission could function with only three members appointed.

Gali Baharav-Miara, the attorney general, called the bill tailor-made for the government's personal needs, and said on 31 August 2026 that the new commission should be left to the next government. The justice ministry warned that it was entirely possible only the coalition would appoint members. The October Council, which represents bereaved families, said the bill "is not intended to uncover the truth, but to bury it alongside our loved ones".

Netanyahu has said any government-appointed inquiry must also examine the Oslo accords and the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

The Knesset dissolved itself on 17 July 2026 and Israel votes on 27 October 2026.

Gadi Eisenkot, Yair Golan, Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman issued a joint demand on 8 September 2026 for an immediate investigation of what Netanyahu knew, when he knew it, why he did not update the security establishment and why he did not act to protect Israeli civilians. "There is no longer any room for excuses, denials or concealment," they said.

"More and more signs point to the same conclusion: Netanyahu led Israel blindly into the October 7 disaster," Eisenkot, the former chief of the general staff who now leads Yashar and is Netanyahu's main challenger, wrote on X. "Who failed to wake whom? Those around him are echoing the pathetic conspiracy theory about betrayal, inventing the most ridiculous line a leader could possibly cling to, 'I wasn't woken up', for two reasons: He knows the truth; he is terrified of it and is trying to evade responsibility. Netanyahu received dozens of warnings about October 7 and ignored them all. He is unfit for office. As soon as the next government is formed, we will establish a state commission of inquiry that will investigate the previous decade, clarify what Netanyahu knew and did not know, get to the truth, and prevent the next disaster."

Eisenkot said in a video statement later that day that if the report is true, "it represents a serious breach of public trust, extraordinary negligence by a prime minister, and a disregard for critical information that was given to him personally", information "that could have changed the course of an entire country, saving thousands of murdered and thousands of people wounded, in body and soul".

Yair Golan wrote that "Netanyahu is unfit and illegitimate. His place is in prison for his crimes against the State of Israel." He added: "The stories about 'I wasn't woken up' are over. He knew. He was warned."

What the war that followed has cost

Israeli forces have killed 73,658 people in Gaza since 7 October 2023, according to the Gaza health ministry, whose figures the United Nations treats as reliable. Haaretz reported in 2026 that the Israeli military itself accepts a toll of about 71,000.

An Israeli military intelligence database obtained by +972 Magazine, Local Call and the Guardian, and published on 21 August 2025, put the number of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters believed killed at about 8,900 out of roughly 53,000 dead at that point, of whom 7,330 were recorded as certainly dead and 1,570 as probably dead. Set against the total, that leaves 83 per cent of the dead as civilians, or 86 per cent counting only the confirmed fighters.

The Gaza Mortality Survey, published in The Lancet Global Health and based on interviews with 2,000 households, counted 75,200 violent deaths between 7 October 2023 and 5 January 2025, a figure 34.7 per cent higher than the health ministry's 49,090 for the same period. It also counted 16,300 non-violent deaths, of which 8,540 were excess deaths caused by the collapse of living conditions and of the medical system. Women, children and the elderly made up 56.2 per cent of the dead in that survey. A separate study in eClinicalMedicine estimated 116,020 cumulative injuries by 30 April 2025.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification declared famine in Gaza City and the surrounding area in August 2025 and found the entire population in crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity between 16 August and 30 September 2025. By 11 October 2025, 463 Palestinians including 157 children had died of causes related to malnutrition.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry found on 23 June 2026 that Israeli forces had deliberately targeted and killed Palestinian children, that about 30 per cent of the dead in Gaza were children, that more than 50,000 children had been killed or wounded since October 2023 and that one Palestinian child was killed on an average day for the eight months after the October 2025 ceasefire. "The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces," said Srinivasan Muralidhar, who chairs the commission.

What Netanyahu is charged with

Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu on 21 November 2024, having rejected Israel's challenges to the court's jurisdiction. The chamber found reasonable grounds to believe that he bears criminal responsibility as a co-perpetrator for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and for the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts, and as a civilian superior for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population, for conduct from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024. It issued an identical warrant for Yoav Gallant, then defence minister. ICC judges confirmed in July 2025 that both warrants remain valid.

The UN commission of inquiry found on 16 September 2025 that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, meeting four of the five acts set out in the 1948 Genocide Convention: killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group in whole or in part and imposing measures to prevent births. The commission named Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and Gallant as having incited the commission of genocide. "Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza," said Navi Pillay, who chaired the commission at the time. "It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention."

Netanyahu was indicted in Israel in November 2019 on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust across three cases. Case 1000 charges fraud and breach of trust over gifts worth more than 700,000 shekels, including cigars and champagne, from the producer Arnon Milchan and the businessman James Packer, in return for which he is alleged to have pushed a tax break for wealthy Israelis living abroad and lobbied for the restoration of Milchan's US visa. Case 2000 charges fraud and breach of trust over an alleged deal with the Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes between 2008 and 2014 for favourable coverage in exchange for legislation curbing the circulation of the rival Israel Hayom, legislation he never delivered. Case 4000, which carries the bribery count and a maximum of 10 years, charges that he granted regulatory favours to Bezeq, owned by Shaul and Iris Elovitch, including approval of the Bezeq-Yes merger in 2015, in exchange for editorial control of the news site Walla.

Netanyahu's testimony ended on 24 June 2026 after 98 hearings and about 18 months in the witness box, and the case moved to closing submissions, with several months for both sides to file before the judges write a verdict. "10 years of hell," he said of the case. He accused the prosecution of "hunting people in a net in a blatant and distorted manner" and asked the court to reach the truth and justice. He had earlier called the proceedings a police state trial and an absurd circus, and in May 2026 hearings were cancelled on security grounds at his request.

Netanyahu asked President Isaac Herzog for a pardon on 30 November 2025 without admitting guilt, after Donald Trump wrote to Herzog to request one on his behalf. Herzog declined to take up the request on 26 April 2026, saying plea negotiations between Netanyahu's lawyers and the attorney general should be exhausted first. "Negotiations for an arrangement are a necessary part of the attempt to bring the parties to an agreement," he said. The pardon request remains undecided.