Netanyahu asks UAE president to deny report on Oct. 7 warning during secret visit

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed during a secret meeting Sunday to deny a report that he had warned Netanyahu of an imminent Hamas attack before Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Monday.

Netanyahu asked bin Zayed to deny reports about their phone conversation and details surrounding the events before Oct. 7 that “could embarrass him,” Haaretz said, citing unspecified sources.

The Israeli premier also asked the Emirati president for what one source described as “moral support,” the newspaper reported.

Netanyahu held an hour-long meeting with bin Zayed, according to two people briefed on the trip.

Israeli and Emirati authorities had not officially confirmed the reported visit.

•  The former head of the spy agency’s international diplomacy department says he had no recollection of “any reports regarding a warning” from the UAE’s president or Fatah officials, nor “a visit by [Egyptian intelligence chief] Abbas Kamel” before Hamas’s October 2023 incursion into southern Israel.

Eyal Tsir Cohen said Kamel may have “secretly” travelled to Israel without engaging with his department, but added that they’ve met repeatedly after October 7.

Cohen’s comments were a response to WSJ reporting that Egypt sent Israel three separate warnings that Gaza was a powder keg ready to ignite, including a personal call by Kamel to Netanyahu days before the attack. In an in-person trip to Israel in September, Kamel warned officials the “dire” situation could “blow up in everyone’s faces.”