The UAE Warning Before October 7: What the Haaretz Leak Really Tells Us, Three Weeks Before the Vote

It's an investigation published Tuesday by the daily Haaretz, drawn from a forthcoming book, that is shaking up the Israeli campaign. According to its authors, the president of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed, contacted Benjamin Netanyahu during the last week of September 2023 to warn him that Hamas was preparing a "major operation." Also according to Haaretz, the prime minister did not pass this warning on to the heads of the security services. The chain described is precise: Yahya Sinwar allegedly spoke to a Fatah intermediary about "a terrifying operation" akin to an "earthquake"; the information reportedly reached bin Zayed via an adviser, then was relayed to Netanyahu in the context of normalization between the two countries.

The Prime Minister's Office denounces a "total lie" and denies even the existence of any exchange with the Emirati leader in late September 2023. Let's be clear: at this stage, nothing is proven, the source is an unpublished book relayed by an opposition newspaper, and the denial is categorical. But the shockwave is very real. Gadi Eizenkot, former IDF chief of staff and Netanyahu's main rival, is blunt: "Netanyahu received dozens of warnings for October 7 and ignored them all. He is not fit" to lead. Naftali Bennett goes further: he "bears personal and direct responsibility" and "cannot continue to hold his office for another minute."

What this affair reveals, first of all, is the state of a country that still hasn't reckoned with October 7. Two years after the massacre of 1,221 people, Israel has not had a state commission of inquiry commensurate with the trauma, and it is this void that the press and the election campaign are filling, leak after leak. When the truth is not established by an unimpeachable body, it becomes an electoral weapon — and each camp picks its own version. For the families of the victims and the hostages, it's a double punishment: their grief serves as ammunition.

But there is an angle almost no one is highlighting: if the Haaretz account is true, even in part, it means an Arab leader tried to save Israeli lives. The warning would have traveled through the normalization channel — precisely the bond that Israel's enemies swore was artificial and fragile. The Abraham Accords would then have functioned as a real alliance where Israel's own chain of decision-making allegedly failed. That is a strategic lesson of enormous weight: Israel's security also rests on the strength of its regional friendships.

Then there is the deadline: the legislative elections of October 27. Whatever the judicial or journalistic outcome of this affair, it puts the question of responsibility at the center of the vote. The next government, whoever forms it, will have to face it — because a country that swore "never again" cannot afford not to know who knew. That, now, is the real stake of October 27: not to punish or absolve one man, but to give the people of Israel the truth they are owed.