Netanyahu rivals call him unfit over UAE warning report

Israeli opposition leaders called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unfit to serve on Tuesday after Haaretz reported that the United Arab Emirates had warned him before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack.

Haaretz, citing mostly anonymous sources in an excerpt from a forthcoming book by its reporters, said UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan spoke to Netanyahu a week and a half before the attack and told him Hamas was planning a major operation.

Netanyahu's office called the report “an absolute lie” and denied that he spoke to the Emirati leader at that time.

Gadi Eisenkot, a former military commander and Netanyahu rival in the October 27 elections, accused the prime minister of evading responsibility for security failures. “Netanyahu received dozens of warnings for October 7 and ignored them all. He is unfit,” Eisenkot wrote on X.

Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister who is also running in the elections, said Netanyahu “bears personal and direct responsibility” for the deaths on October 7 and “cannot continue to serve in his position for even one more minute.”

Haaretz said Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, later killed by Israel, had warned a former Palestinian official that the militants were preparing “a terrifying operation” that he described as an “earthquake”. The newspaper said the former Palestinian official relayed the message to an Emirati adviser, who passed it to the Emirati leader, who then called Netanyahu.

The October 7 Hamas attack killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Militants also took about 251 hostages into Gaza, 44 of them already dead.

Israel's offensive in Gaza in response has killed 73,658 people, according to the Gaza health ministry, which is under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

The UAE normalised relations with Israel in 2020 under the US-brokered Abraham Accords, a step Netanyahu has presented as a key achievement.