Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced plans to sue Haaretz newspaper over a report claiming he received advance warning of Hamas’s attack plans days before the 7 October 2023 attacks.
In a statement posted on X on Wednesday, Netanyahu denounced the report as “fabricated” and “false”. He said he had instructed his legal counsel to file lawsuits against both the newspaper and the authors of the report, Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yaval, reports Al Jazeera.
The report, published on Tuesday, alleged that United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed had warned Netanyahu of a potential Hamas offensive 10 days before the 7 October 2023 attacks.
According to Haaretz, the UAE president, also known as MBZ, spoke to Netanyahu by telephone and warned him of a threat posed by then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
The report said Sinwar, angered by stalled prisoner exchange negotiations and Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza, had passed warnings to the UAE through an intermediary.
Sinwar reportedly said he was preparing a “huge surprise” and instructed his contacts to tell Israel to “expect an earthquake”.
MBZ and his advisers reportedly interpreted the messages as a warning of an impending full-scale assault and passed the intelligence to Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency.
However, the agency dismissed the threat, prompting MBZ to raise the matter directly with Netanyahu, who also reportedly brushed it aside.
The UAE has declined to comment directly on the allegations.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “The UAE government does not comment on media stories or speculation regarding conversations between government leaders”.
Netanyahu strongly denied the report’s claim that he had spoken to MBZ by telephone.
“The National Security Council and the Military Secretary meticulously reviewed the Prime Minister’s call log for those days—and found no trace of it whatsoever,” he said.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu further condemned the report as “politically motivated” and described it as part of the “left’s election campaign”.
The report comes as Netanyahu seeks to secure his position as prime minister ahead of the upcoming Knesset elections in October. He is trailing former military chief Gadi Eisenkot in opinion polls.
In a separate statement, Netanyahu claimed that Palestinian political figure Muhammad Dahlan was responsible for Haaretz’s “false report”.
Dahlan, who lives in the UAE, was expelled from the Fatah party in 2011 following a power struggle with current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Representatives for Dahlan have rejected Netanyahu’s claim, according to Israeli media reports.
On 7 October 2023, Palestinian fighters killed at least 1,195 people in southern Israel and took approximately 251 others captive.
The attacks prompted Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, in which at least 73,669 Palestinians have been killed.
