UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed allegedly warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Hamas was planning a major offensive in Israel just days before the militant group launched its attack on 7 October 2023, Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz claimed on Tuesday.
Haaretz reported that at the end of September 2023 — 10 days before the attack — the UAE president spoke with Netanyahu for 45 minutes and said the leader of Hamas in Gaza at the time Yahya Sinwar was planning a major operation.
The newspaper reported that Bin Zayed told Netanyahu that the attack 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 Haaretz report claims Netanyahu “reacted with relative calm” and assured bin Zayed that Israel was prepared for any scenario and a possible attack was more likely to come from the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu's office called the report by the left-leaning newspaper "an absolute lie" and denied he spoke to the Emirati leader at that time.
