Around ten days before the third anniversary of the day that “wounded” Israel more than any other, and one month before the elections to choose the country’s new government, the question of who ultimately bears responsibility for the failure to prevent the attack organised and carried out by Hamas on 7 October 2023 remains as relevant as ever and, at this particular time, could determine Israeli voters’ decisions on the road to the ballot box.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is seeking a unique seventh term in office, has shifted the blame onto the country’s security officials, while his critics argue that he is the one who should personally be held accountable for the fact that the entire country was “caught asleep” on that fateful morning.

When the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported earlier in September that Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, President of the United Arab Emirates, had secretly warned Netanyahu that Hamas was planning a major attack, the question of who was responsible for the fiasco acquired even greater significance and began to dangerously close in on the Israeli prime minister.

The message that never reached the security forces

He has categorically denied the information reported by Haaretz. However, one person who revealed that they had spoken with Sheikh Mohammed and another source who said they had been briefed by an individual involved in the telephone conversation between the two leaders confirmed to the New York Times what the Israeli newspaper had reported: namely, that Netanyahu had indeed been informed by the Emirati leader that Hamas was considering a major attack.

The sheikh’s warning, however, never reached the heads of Israel’s security establishment, according to five former senior Israeli officials. Why did this happen? As the New York Times reports, Netanyahu convened the country’s security chiefs a few days later, on 1 October 2023, for a meeting about the general situation in the Gaza Strip, but never mentioned the warning, according to the minutes of the meeting examined by the American newspaper.

Instead, he told them that the goal should be to maintain calm in Gaza and reacted when some security officials argued that Israel should consider military strikes against senior Hamas figures in Gaza, who were receiving updates about attacks against Israelis in the West Bank, according to the minutes.

Fear of undermining relations with Saudi Arabia

At the meeting, details of which had not been made public until recently, Netanyahu said that any Israeli military action in Gaza could undermine the prospect of establishing diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel – a deal that the Israeli prime minister believed was just around the corner.

Sheikh Mohammed had called “Bibi” in late September to tell him that, based on information he had received, Hamas was planning to launch an attack. The people briefed on the warning said that the Emirati leader’s information was not specific as to whether Hamas was planning to launch rockets towards Israel or prepare a ground invasion across the border.

Moreover, the original source of the information conveyed by Sheikh Mohammed to Netanyahu remained unclear, just as it is unclear whether other issues were discussed during their conversation.

The warning proved correct and the consequences were tragic

The only certainty is that the warning, although vague, proved to be correct. And the consequences were tragic. A few days later, thousands of Hamas fighters and their allies launched an invasion across the Gaza border into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages, in the deadliest attack against Israel in the country’s history.

Following the Haaretz report, Netanyahu sought to make clear in a statement that he had never received a warning call from Sheikh Mohammed and said that, if any information had originated from the Emirates, it would have been conveyed to Israel through the intelligence services.

Sheikh Mohammed himself referred to his September 2023 telephone conversation with Netanyahu several months later, in a discussion he had with then-CIA Director William Burns, according to a person familiar with the content of the conversation. As the source revealed, Mohammed told Burns that he had made sure to call Netanyahu and pass on information about an imminent threat of violence in the West Bank or Gaza Strip that Hamas was planning.

The close Tel Aviv–Abu Dhabi ties that were disrupted after the operations in Gaza

The telephone conversation between Sheikh Mohammed and Netanyahu, ultimately confirmed by several sources, is an indication of the close security ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, which have strengthened in recent years. In 2020, Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi agreed – at the urging of the United States – to normalise their diplomatic relations under an agreement that became known as the “Abraham Accords”. The agreement strengthened economic, political and defence ties between the two countries, which share intelligence and regard Islamist organisations, including Hamas, as enemies.

Relations between Israel and the Emirates deteriorated, however, following the 7 October attack and the ensuing war between Tel Aviv and Hamas, which caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians, left much of Gaza in ruins and created a huge humanitarian crisis. Netanyahu and his Emirati counterparts held differing views on the governance of Gaza and the possibility of Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

The “Jericho Wall” also exposed the crisis within Israel’s security forces

Benjamin Netanyahu was not, however, the only figure in Israel’s leadership who ignored warning signs before Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023.

The heads of Israel’s security agencies repeatedly downplayed other signs indicating that the Palestinian organisation was preparing an attack, despite the fact that there were numerous indications at the time.

The most characteristic warning sign of all came in 2022, when the Israeli military obtained a Hamas battle plan, which military leaders dismissed as unrealistic. The plan, which the military had given the code name “Jericho Wall”, ultimately proved to be the operational plan for the 7 October attacks.

They believed Sinwar had only political ambitions

In the years before the attack, Israeli military and intelligence officials had concluded that Hamas was incapable of carrying out a major attack against Israel and that Yahya Sinwar, the organisation’s leader in the Gaza Strip, who had organised a sophisticated deception campaign, was more interested in governing the enclave than in a new war with Israel.

And this was what also “relaxed” Netanyahu, who likewise wanted to maintain calm in Gaza, as this would allow him to focus on Iran and Hezbollah, which he regarded as a much greater threat than Hamas.

Netanyahu believed that Israel had deterred Hamas from starting a war, according to the state audit report on government decision-making before the October attack. It states that Bibi had instructed the Israeli military and intelligence services to pursue a policy of “postponing confrontation” and “maintaining Hamas’s status as an effective, restrained and restraining governing authority” in the Gaza Strip.

The telephone conversation and Sheikh Mohammed’s warning are not mentioned in any of the internal investigations conducted by the military, intelligence services or other bodies into the causes of Israel’s serious security failures before and during 7 October, according to the five former senior Israeli officials who took part in the assessments and are cited by the Times.

Bibi heads into the most critical election with serious losses

At the end of the following month, Israelis will vote in the first national elections since the 7 October attack, and the battle for parliamentary seats in a deeply divided country (also because of the state of alert in which thousands of citizens continue to live due to the conflicts with Hezbollah and Iran) is shaping up to be extremely close. According to the Times, these elections will determine not only Netanyahu’s political future, but many Israelis believe they could significantly shape the future of their country.

The Haaretz report undermined Netanyahu’s argument that the Israeli military and security services were responsible for the intelligence failures that led to the 7 October attack. He and his allies have blocked efforts by Israeli lawmakers to establish a state commission of inquiry into the security failures that preceded the attack, arguing that such a commission would not uncover the truth.

Earlier this month, Netanyahu’s political opponents also issued a joint statement saying that the Haaretz report on the September 2023 warning “adds to a series of revelations about his failures” and “once again underscores why Bibi is fighting for his political survival: to prevent the establishment of a state commission of inquiry and block the truth from being revealed to the Israeli people”.