UAE official disputes report that bin Zayed warned Netanyahu before October 7

An official in the United Arab Emirates has pushed back on Israeli reporting that the country's president, Mohammed bin Zayed, personally telephoned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a warning ahead of the October 7 attack. The Israeli news site Ynet reported that an official in Abu Dhabi told a local newspaper that the Emirates discusses security questions with other states through the relevant bodies, and does not deal with details of that kind at the level of national leaders.

The Israeli journalist Amit Segal, writing on his Telegram channel, described the statement as an official denial that the Emirati ruler spoke with Netanyahu and passed him warnings, quoting the formulation that security affairs are discussed at the relevant levels and not at the leadership level. In a follow-up post he noted that the subheading on the Emirati report presented the response as refuting the Israeli publication.

What was originally reported

Ynet said the Emirati response came more than a week after the publication of an investigative report describing a warning call from the Emirati president to Netanyahu before the October 7 attack. According to Ynet, the Emirati official's comments followed pressure exerted from Jerusalem. The Israeli Telegram channel News.co.il, republishing the denial, framed the question around the newspaper Haaretz and former prime minister Naftali Bennett, both of whom it associated with the original claim. The material available does not set out what Haaretz published or what Bennett said, beyond that framing.

A second statement from the foreign ministry

Separately, the Telegram channel Abu Ali Express, which monitors Arabic-language media for Israeli readers, reported a response from the Emirati foreign ministry saying the government of the United Arab Emirates does not comment on reports or speculation published in the media regarding conversations between heads of government. That is a narrower formulation than a denial: it declines to engage with the substance rather than contradicting it.

Where the accounts diverge

The Israeli reports do not agree on what the Emirati statement actually establishes. Segal and News.co.il present it as a formal denial that the conversation took place. Ynet's account is more qualified: it reports the same quotation about security matters being handled outside the leaders' channel, but adds that the Emirati official did not assert that no warning whatsoever had been conveyed to Netanyahu. N12's news channel carried Segal's framing, describing an official in the Emirates as denying the claim that Mohammed bin Zayed was the one who passed the warning to Netanyahu.

The distinction matters because the two readings are not identical. One version rules out any such call. The other leaves open the possibility that information reached Israel through channels below the level of the two leaders, which is what the Emirati wording itself points to.

Who Mohammed bin Zayed is

Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the president of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Abu Dhabi, the largest of the seven emirates that make up the federation. The Emirates established formal diplomatic relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords, and the relationship has included security and intelligence contacts alongside trade and aviation links. Reporting that the Emirati head of state personally telephoned an Israeli prime minister with a security warning therefore touches both on the intelligence record before October 7 and on the nature of the bilateral channel.

Why the pre-attack warning question is contested in Israel

The question of what warnings Israeli decision-makers received before the October 7 attack, from whom, and through which channel, has been a central dispute in Israeli public debate since the attack. Claims that a specific warning reached the prime minister directly carry political weight, because they bear on the argument over responsibility for the failure to anticipate the assault. That is the context in which the reported call was published, and in which the Emirati response was quickly circulated by Israeli commentators.

What the reports do not say

The material does not name the local Emirati newspaper or official news site that carried the statement, and does not identify the official quoted beyond describing the person as an official or senior figure in the Emirates. It does not give the date of the reported call, nor the content of any warning said to have been transmitted. It does not describe what form the pressure from Jerusalem took, who applied it, or to whom. No response from Netanyahu's office, from Bennett, or from Haaretz appears in the reports. The original investigative report's publisher and findings are not detailed in the material available here, and the full text of the Emirati foreign ministry statement is not reproduced. Whether any warning reached Israel through other channels remains unaddressed by the statements as reported.