Haaretz: Netanyahu Ignored October 7 Warnings, Rejected Early Hostage Offer
This week, Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper, reported that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu received an explicit warning that Hamas was preparing a major attack before October 7, then withheld it from Israel’s security chiefs. The investigation also found that Israel rejected an early Hamas offer to release civilian hostages shortly after the attack.
The revelations seriously undermine key narratives used to justify U.S. and broader international support for what ultimately became a devastating military onslaught on the enclave. They carry added weight as Israel faces increasingly substantiated accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing, including from Israeli organizations such as B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Jewish groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, and a growing number of Holocaust scholars.
Before the “Earthquake”
On Tuesday, Haaretz published an article titled, “Revealed: Netanyahu Received an Explicit Warning Days Before Oct. 7. He Didn’t Brief Israel’s Security Chiefs.”
The investigation was conducted by Haaretz journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval for their new book Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment. They say their reporting draws on dozens of sources in Israel and abroad, including senior officials, recordings, internal documents, and correspondence.
Israel and Hamas had been conducting indirect talks over a temporary truce, economic relief for Gaza, and a prisoner exchange. Netanyahu knew about the talks and approved them, according to the report.
By late summer 2023, much of the economic issues had reportedly been resolved, and the parties were edging toward a possible prisoner deal.
Then Netanyahu stalled the process.
He repeatedly postponed convening the ministerial committee needed to approve the release of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar grew frustrated. In early September, he abruptly cut contact with the negotiating channel.
Soon afterward, Sinwar summoned a Fatah intermediary who had helped carry messages between Hamas and Israel:
“Tell the Israelis that if they don’t make progress, I’m preparing a huge surprise for them,” he declared emphatically. Here, he dropped a key word for the first time, one that should have triggered red flags: “Tell them to expect a ‘zilzal,’ an earthquake.”
“Zilzal” meant war.
The Warning From UAE
The intermediary left the meeting alarmed and turned to a close friend, a Palestinian advisor to United Arab Emirates (UAE) President Mohammed bin Zayed who had previously lived in Gaza.
At first, bin Zayed hesitated to pass the warning to Israel. He feared that an unconfirmed warning of war could trigger an Israeli preemptive strike.
So the intermediary met Sinwar again.
This time, Sinwar was explicit:
Convey a message to them that I am preparing the mother of all surprises. A terrifying operation. Something extraordinary. Please convey to the Israelis what I am saying word for word.
Bin Zayed took it seriously. He decided that
Sinwar’s message must be conveyed to the Israelis, to the highest ranks there, as soon as possible.
On September 15, the intermediary and the Emirati advisor delivered the warning to Israel’s Shin Bet, the country’s domestic security and counterterrorism agency. Agency chief Ronen Bar immediately requested a call with Netanyahu and briefed him on Sinwar’s “earthquake” threat.
Two days later, senior Israeli security officials met to assess it. Bar warned that “we are on a collision course” and recommended either a powerful operation or “strong defensive efforts” around Gaza and the West Bank.
No major action followed.
Bin Zayed then contacted Netanyahu personally. According to Haaretz, the two spoke for 45 minutes in late September:
Bin Zayed expressed concern that the event in question would not only lead to bloodshed but also destabilize the entire region and undermine the Abraham Accords.
Netanyahu reportedly reassured him that Israel was prepared and said the more likely threat was in the West Bank.
Other Warnings
The Emirati warning was apparently not the only one.
Haaretz reports that Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel also warned Netanyahu about “something unusual, a terrifying operation” that Hamas was preparing.
Yet during another security discussion on October 1, Netanyahu reportedly mentioned neither warning.
One senior Shin Bet official told Haaretz that knowing about the calls might have changed the agency’s assessment, saying,
If we had known about the warnings, there’s a chance it would have given more weight to the first message we received from Sinwar.
The Hostages
At 6:29 a.m. on October 7, Sinwar’s “earthquake” arrived.
By the time Israel’s security cabinet convened at 2:45 p.m., the scale of the hostage crisis was still unclear. But the government’s initial posture was taking shape:
“I instructed the IDF: No negotiations whatsoever,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared. “They will only talk to us when they are on the ground, with their heads underwater.”
Yet only hours later, according to Haaretz, an opportunity to secure the release of civilian hostages emerged.
At 7:00 p.m., Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al Thani called Mossad Director David Barnea. Al Thani said he had threatened Hamas leaders with expulsion from Qatar unless they released the civilians. He told Barnea,
I would like to inform you that Hamas is ready to release all civilians now, and we are prepared to mediate.
Barnea rejected talks:
“If they want to release the civilians, let them release them,” Barnea replied. “We are not prepared to speak with Hamas.”
Al Thani then called then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and told him the Israelis were “not interested” in Qatar’s offer.
“Let’s wait,” Blinken allegedly replied. “I will speak with Netanyahu personally.”
When al Thani warned that time was critical,
Blinken stopped him: “Right now, the situation is complex. Israel is still under attack, and there’s no one to talk to. We will wait three days.”
Blinken now denies that account.
Another Offer
Meanwhile, a separate channel produced a similar offer.
Sinwar’s right-hand man, Rawhi Mushtaha, told an associate of former Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan that Hamas was prepared to release what it classified as civilians, meaning hostages under 18 and over 50. Per the outlet,
“He told me that in the first stage, they had no problem releasing all civilians without anything in return,” Samir Mashharawi recounted. “I swear, those were his exact words: all civilians, without anything in return.”
The sole condition was finding an agreed mediator for further talks.
The message reached Israeli officials, but no agreement followed.
A senior Israeli defense official later acknowledged how little priority the hostages received during those first deliberations, telling Haaretz,
The issue of the hostages was not seriously on the agenda at this stage, and no one at the military or political level was open to discussing the proposal. The release of the hostages did not even enter the list of war objectives formulated by the government on the night of October 7.
Other October 7 Questions
The revelations land on top of other unresolved irregularities surrounding October 7.
Gaza had one of the most heavily monitored borders in the world. Israel had built a $1.1 billion high-tech barrier around the enclave.
Yet Hamas disabled key cameras, communications towers, and remote weapons within minutes of launching the attack.
Israeli military investigations have also acknowledged that some Israeli communities waited hours for meaningful assistance. At Nahal Oz, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not arrive in force for seven hours. At Nir Yitzhak, troops entered only after a similar delay, “just four minutes after the last terrorists left,” per the Jerusalem Post.
Former Golani Brigade soldier Shalom Sheetrit told Knesset commanders canceled border patrols in his sector from about 5:20 a.m. until 9 a.m.
Then there is the Hannibal Directive.
Haaretz previously reported that Israeli forces invoked the controversial procedure at several locations. At 11:22 a.m., one order transmitted across the Gaza Division network stated, “Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza.”
The procedure was intended to prevent captives from being taken into enemy territory, even at grave risk to their lives. Israeli authorities later acknowledged individual cases of Israelis killed by Israeli fire.
At the same time, several of the most sensational atrocity claims circulated immediately after October 7 did not survive scrutiny. The Grayzone, among other outlets, later challenged many of those accounts in its documentary “Atrocity Inc.”
None of that erases the documented killings, abductions, and other crimes committed by Hamas and other armed groups.
It does show how quickly unverified claims became part of the accepted narrative while major questions about Israel’s intelligence, defenses, and military response remained unresolved.
Denials, Investigations, and Lawsuits
Netanyahu rejects the Haaretz allegations.
His office called the investigation an “absolute lie” and said he never spoke with bin Zayed during the period described.
The prime minister has threatened to sue Haaretz and Eldar for libel.
Netanyahu’s Likud Party has gone further. The party called for a criminal investigation of the journalists, Haaretz, and opposition leader Yair Golan and his Democrats party. Golan had responded to the report by declaring that Netanyahu “knew” and “was warned,” and saying that “his place is in prison for his crimes against the State of Israel.”
Likud accused those involved, without presenting evidence, of attempting to interfere in the election with foreign entities. It also accused Eldar of receiving money to spread an antisemitic “blood libel,” even though Eldar and coauthor Ruth Yuval are themselves Jewish.
Haaretz says it stands by its reporting.
Bin Zayed has not commented publicly on the report. The UAE Foreign Ministry neither confirmed nor denied the alleged call, while an Emirati source familiar with the conversation separately confirmed it to The Times of Israel.
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