Egypt just proved it warned Netanyahu before October seven
3 days ago · 28 September 2026Share
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concludes his address before a joint meeting of Congress on March 3, 2015. File photo. Speaker of the house Boehner · Public domain
Egypt warned Israel about a coming attack from Gaza at least three times before October 7, 2023.
And here's the new part. One of those warnings was a phone call straight to Benjamin Netanyahu's office, days before the massacre. That call has never been reported before now.
The Wall Street Journal broke it two days ago. It builds on an earlier investigation by The Atlantic. And it goes straight at something Benjamin Netanyahu has said again and again — that his security chiefs failed to warn him properly.
These two reports say that's not true.
So let's go through it warning by warning.
Warning one. June 2023. Egypt's intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, sends a vague message. He's urging Israel to restart ceasefire and hostage talks with Hamas.
Warning two is the big one, and it's in person.
26 September 2023. Eleven days before the attack. A chartered Cessna linked to Egyptian intelligence lands at Ben-Gurion Airport, in a section normally kept for sensitive diplomatic visits. Abbas Kamel is on board. He stays 67 minutes.
That's the same day Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials are in Jerusalem marking 50 years since the Yom Kippur War.
Officials from Israel, Arab states, America and Europe were briefed on the meeting afterwards. They say Abbas Kamel warned that Hamas looked to be preparing a major attack, and urged Israel to ease economic pressure on Gaza to calm things down.
One former Israeli official who was briefed on it put it like this.
He says quote "if you don't change course, Gaza is going to explode in your face".
No date. No target. No method. Not in this warning, and not in any of the others either.
Now, around the same time — about a week and a half before the attack — Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of the UAE, calls Benjamin Netanyahu directly. They talk for 45 minutes. He warns that Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's leader in Gaza, is planning a major operation against Israel.
And Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't seem convinced.
The rest of this story is for members.
Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data showing fires in Israel and the Gaza strip on 7 October 2023. Pierre Markuse · CC BY 2.0
So that's Egypt twice, and the UAE once. And there's still a third Egyptian warning to come.
Here's the new one. In the days before the attack, after Israeli officials had already told Abbas Kamel the situation was under control, he calls Benjamin Netanyahu's office again.
One Arab official said Egypt kept warning Israel right up until roughly 48 hours before the attack. On 5 October 2023 — two days before the massacre — Egypt sends yet another message. The situation can't go on, it says. Again, no date, no method.
Add it up. Three separate Egyptian warnings. One from the UAE. All landing on Israeli desks before 7 October.
It says he neither met nor spoke with Abbas Kamel in the months before the attack, and that no Israeli intelligence official ever passed him a warning like this.
It calls the reporting quote "recycled lies" that will not become true no matter how often they are repeated.
Tzachi Hanegbi backs that up. He ran Israel's National Security Council at the time, and he's still a Netanyahu ally. He told The Atlantic that Abbas Kamel never visited Israel, and that no Egyptian warning was ever delivered.
So now you've got Benjamin Netanyahu's office and Tzachi Hanegbi on one side. And The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and Israeli, Arab, American and European officials on the other.
Neither Benjamin Netanyahu's office nor Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's office answered The Atlantic's questions about the Kamel visit. Benjamin Netanyahu's office didn't answer the Wall Street Journal's questions about the phone call either. Egypt's and the UAE's foreign ministries didn't respond at all.
So what don't we know?
We don't know exactly who Abbas Kamel met during those 67 minutes in Israel. We don't know whether Benjamin Netanyahu ever discussed these warnings with his security cabinet. And there's no confirmation the October phone call was ever recorded or written down anywhere.
Abbas Kamel was replaced as Egypt's intelligence chief in October 2024.
And the timing here matters. These reports land with just under a month to go before Israel's first election since 7 October 2023 — the vote that decides whether Benjamin Netanyahu stays in power. Right when the question of who knew what, and when, is back in front of Israeli voters.
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