Netanyahu's Likud accuses Mohammad Dahlan of poll meddling

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party accused Palestinian political figure Mohammad Dahlan on Wednesday of foreign interference before Israel's October 27 election, saying he was behind a newspaper report that Netanyahu had been warned about Hamas's 2023 attack.

Haaretz wrote Tuesday that UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed spoke to Netanyahu a week and a half before the attack and told him Hamas was planning a major operation. Netanyahu's office denied the report.

Likud called the report false and said Dahlan wanted to topple the right-wing government led by Netanyahu because he wanted control of the Gaza Strip.

Likud also accused the centre-left opposition party The Democrats of being involved in a payment to the Haaretz journalist who published the report. It said Democrats leader Yair Golan had recently been in the UAE with Ronen Bar, the former head of the Shin Bet security agency, and asked whether the visit was connected to the Haaretz report.

Dahlan rejected accusations of interference in the Israeli election, but stopped short of denying that he was behind the leak. A statement from the Democratic Reform Bloc, a new party he founded ahead of Palestinian elections in November, called the allegations “ridiculous and misleading”.

Dahlan, a former senior official in the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, was ousted from the Strip after Hamas's violent takeover in 2007. He has since been based in the UAE, has remained involved in Palestinian affairs and has played a key role in the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza.