Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged on Tuesday evening, for the first time, that Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel arrived in Israel about a week and a half before the 7 October 2023 attack. He confirmed, however, that he did not meet him, raising questions about which officials Kamel met during the brief visit.
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 14, Netanyahu said Kamel “did not meet me because I was at a memorial ceremony for Israeli army soldiers”. He added: “Since when does an intelligence chief speak to a head of state? That has never happened to me.” Netanyahu said the Egyptian intelligence chief spent 59 minutes in Israel, and addressed the security and legal authorities, saying: “I want to know whom he met.
There is someone who met him and is trying to pin the blame on me,” before asking: “Do you want to see the deep state?” Netanyahu’s claims that he does not usually communicate with foreign intelligence chiefs contradict a video published by his office two years ago, showing him shaking hands with Kamel and speaking to him inside the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, during a visit in which the Egyptian official led a delegation of senior Egyptian officials.
Investigation documents Abbas Kamel’s visit and warning
An investigation published by the US magazine The Atlantic, based on Israeli, Egyptian, Arab, US and European sources, reported that Kamel arrived in Israel on 26 September 2023 for a very brief visit and warned that Hamas was preparing to carry out a major attack.
According to the investigation, Kamel urged Israeli officials to provide economic concessions to avoid escalation. The magazine quoted him as saying that “Gaza will explode in your faces” unless Israel changed its policy. According to the published account, Kamel did not provide a date for the attack or specific information about it.
The investigation said that a rented Cessna aircraft linked to Egyptian intelligence landed at Ben Gurion Airport and remained there for 67 minutes before returning to Cairo. It was not established whom Kamel met during that period. The magazine quoted a former Israeli official as saying: “The envoy himself was the message.” Israel Hayom had reported the aircraft’s landing at the time, without revealing the identity of the passenger on board.
The investigation’s estimate of the visit’s duration, 67 minutes, differs from the 59 minutes cited by Netanyahu in his interview. About two hours after the aircraft arrived, Netanyahu attended a ceremony in Jerusalem marking the 50th anniversary of the October 1973 war. He said at the event that the main lesson from that war was “not to underestimate any threat”.
Multiple reports cite Egyptian warnings
Two days after the 7 October attack, journalist Smadar Perry reported in Yedioth Ahronoth that Kamel had conveyed a message to Netanyahu’s office warning of “something unusual, and a huge operation” coming from the Gaza Strip. Perry quoted an Egyptian intelligence source as saying that Kamel was “astonished by the Israeli indifference” to the warning.
According to the same source, the Israeli side responded that the security establishment was focused on the West Bank and that “the situation in Gaza is under control”. The Israeli prime minister’s office denied the account and later described it as “fake news”. The Associated Press also reported an Egyptian warning before the attack.
The Wall Street Journal, citing official Egyptian sources, reported that Kamel contacted Netanyahu in early October 2023 to warn of an imminent attack, after two earlier Egyptian warnings had gone unheeded. According to the newspaper’s account, the Egyptian warnings began in June 2023 in vague terms and included a call for Israel to return to negotiations with Hamas.
Netanyahu’s office, however, denied receiving any warning and said that Egypt had “officially denied” on 11 October 2023 that it had warned Israel. The office said at the time that Netanyahu had neither met nor spoken to Kamel during the months before the attack, and that no Israeli intelligence official had passed such a warning to him.
Official denial and Israeli warnings before the attack
Netanyahu repeated the denial in a statement responding to The Wall Street Journal report, two days after his office denied the report published by The Atlantic. Regarding warnings issued before the attack, Haaretz reported that the Israeli army had delivered four documents containing general warnings to Netanyahu between March and July 2023.
Yedioth Ahronoth also reported that Ronen Bar, head of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service, gave Netanyahu a general warning on 23 July of the same year. Reports, citing the Israeli newspaper, said that the president of the UAE personally warned Netanyahu at the end of September 2023 about Yahya Sinwar’s intentions.
The UAE Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the leaks, saying in a statement issued at the time that it did not comment on media reports or speculation about conversations between government leaders.
