As Israelis prepare to vote next month in a tightly contested legislative race that will determine the country's next government, they're still debating how their country was caught by surprise on Oct. 7, 2023, when the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas stormed across the border and killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped hundreds more. The discussion got new fuel when the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Monday that, just days before the attack that sparked the war in Gaza and arguably the much wider conflict across the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warned in a phone call by the leader of the United Arab Emirates that Gaza's Hamas leaders were planning a major assault. The Haaretz report said Netanyahu did not pass on the warning to Israel's security leaders.
CBS News has not independently confirmed Haaretz's reporting, which the Israeli newspaper said it stood by in a Tuesday statement. The day Hamas attacked, Israel was caught by surprise, despite having observed preparations by Hamas for the assault, some of which the group itself posted in videos online. Netanyahu's office denied in a Tuesday statement that he had received any explicit warning from the Emirati leader leading up to the attack, and said he had "instructed his attorneys to file a defamation lawsuit" against Haaretz and the reporter who filed the story.
"No conversation took place between the Prime Minister and the President of the United Arab Emirates," Netanyahu's office said. "This is a malicious libel with clear political timing, as part of the left's election campaign, and more such false smears will follow." Israel's national legislative elections take place on Oct. 27, and there is currently no clear front-runner. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is running against Netanyahu in the upcoming election and has met with the Emirati leader himself several times in recent years, wrote in a social media post Tuesday that he believed the Haaretz report was true, adding that Netanyahu's "ignoring of the warnings is criminal negligence." The Haaretz report and subsequent denial by Netanyahu also gave a rare look into the high-stakes diplomacy of the Middle East.
Netanyahu's office confirmed in its statement that, as reported by Haaretz, whenever the Emirati leader does wish to speak with the Israeli leader, a representative from the UAE travels to Netanyahu's office and provides a specially encrypted phone for the conversation. Netanyahu's office said Tuesday that there is no record of a call between the Israeli and Emirati leaders from the beginning of September until Oct. 7, 2023. There was no record of an Emirati visitor to the prime minister's office during that period either, Netanyahu's office said.
The check for any such visit or phone call was conducted by the Prime Minister's Office, the National Security Council (NSC) and the Military Secretariat, Netanyahu's office said. The UAE government said in a statement Tuesday that, since the country established normal ties with Israel five years ago, it has maintained "open and direct lines of communication." The statement neither confirmed nor denied the Haaretz report about the phone call. Netanyahu has argued that none of his advisers or security officials woke him up on Oct. 7 until Hamas' attack was underway, and that it wasn't he who failed to protect Israel that day, but the heads of the country's security agencies.
Questions over Netanyahu's actions on that day burst back into public debate last week after Israel's national broadcaster Kan News revealed that three hours passed between Netanyahu being woken up by his military secretary at 6:27 a.m., as the invasion began, and when he first requested to speak with the country's top general. Netanyahu's office released a schedule roughly confirming that timeline, but it added that he spoke with Israel's defense minister around 8 a.m. that day, on his way to the ministry of defense. In the weeks and days leading up to the attack, Netanyahu was warned by top security and political officials that Israel's enemies were considering an attack while the country was being rocked by protests against an effort by Netanyahu's government to overhaul the judicial system, according to statements issued by Netanyahu and security officials at the time.
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