Israel's Netanyahu to sue newspaper over claim UAE warned him of 7 October attack

Ever since 7 October, accusations have been laid against Netanyahu that he did not act quickly enough after the attack began. He has resisted an independent public inquiry into what happened and this latest report will only fuel critics' suspicions.The report, published on Tuesday, cited three "foreign senior sources" and a Palestinian adviser to Sheikh Mohammed as saying that, in the final days of September 2023, a representative from the UAE embassy went to the Israeli prime minister's office with a special phone to ensure the conversation would remain confidential.During that call, Haaretz reported, Netanyahu was given an explicit warning by Sheikh Mohammed - that Sinwar had told a former Palestinian official that Hamas was preparing a major operation that he described as an "earthquake"."Bin Zayed expressed concern that the event in question would not only lead to bloodshed but also destabilise the entire region," Haaretz said, adding that the information contained in its report was a result of extensive research of dozens of sources, documents and correspondence, all carried out for a book, Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment, written by Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval."To his surprise however, the prime minister reacted with relative calm," Haaretz reported. "Netanyahu said that, in his assessment, Hamas intended to operate in the West Bank area, and he reassured bin Zayed that Israel was prepared for any scenario."The report went on to recount that the Emirati leader relayed the conversation he had with Netanyahu to the then CIA director William J Burns. It also said Netanyahu failed to brief the heads of Israel's Shin Bet domestic security agency and Mossad intelligence agency, as well as the Israeli army's chief of staff about his conversation with the UAE president.The report was published on the same day that the UK announced sanctions on illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The decision angered the Israeli government, which announced several countermeasures, including ordering the closure of the British consulate in occupied East Jerusalem.But while that development made international headlines, it was the Haaretz story that led the news in a country getting ready for elections.