Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will sue the Haaretz newspaper over a report that claimed he was warned of Hamas’s plans for an offensive days before the attacks of October 7, 2023. In a statement on X on Wednesday, Netanyahu called the report “fabricated” and “false” and said he had instructed his lawyers to also sue Haaretz and the authors of the report, Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yaval. The report, published on Tuesday, claimed that the president of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed had warned Netanyahu about a possible attack by Hamas 10 days before the events of October 7, 2023. Palestinian fighters killed at least 1,195 people in southern Israel on that day, and took some 251 others captive.
The attacks prompted Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, in which at least 73,669 Palestinians have been killed. The Haaretz report claimed that the UAE president, who is also known as MBZ, spoke to Netanyahu by phone and warned him of a threat from then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. According to Haaretz, Sinwar – who was angered by stalled prisoner exchange talks and Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza – had relayed the warnings to the UAE through an intermediary. He said he was preparing a “huge surprise” and told contacts to tell Israel “to expect an earthquake”, according to the report.
It said MBZ and his aides read this as a sign of an impending full-scale attack and passed the intelligence to Israel’s Shin Bet agency. But the internal security agency dismissed the threat. MBZ then raised the warning directly with Netanyahu, who also brushed it aside, the report said. The UAE has declined to comment on the allegations.
Its Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on Tuesday saying that “the UAE government does not comment on media stories or speculation regarding conversations between government leaders”. The Haaretz report comes at a time when Netanyahu is trying to secure his position as prime minister in the upcoming Knesset elections in October. Netanyahu has been trailing in the polls, facing a fierce challenge from former military chief Gadi Eisenkot. Netanyahu on Wednesday called the Haaretz report “politically motivated” and part of the “left’s election campaign”.
He also denied its claims of a phone call with MBZ. “The National Security Council and the Military Secretary meticulously reviewed the Prime Minister’s call log for those days—and found no trace of it whatsoever,” he said. In a separate statement, Netanyahu also claimed that the person responsible for Haaretz’s “false report” was the Palestinian political figure, Muhammad Dahlan. Dahlan was expelled from the Fatah party in 2011 after a power struggle with the current president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and lives in the UAE. Dahlan’s representatives have rejected the claim, according to Israeli media.
