• Opposition calls PM unfit to serve after Haaretz report, asks him to step down
• Israeli PM’s office terms story ‘an absolute lie’
• UAE refuses to comment

JERUSALEM: Israeli opposition leaders on Tuesday called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unfit to serve after a report that the United Arab Emirates had warned him before the October 7, 2023 Hamas raid.

Haaretz newspaper, in a report excerpted from a forthcoming book by its reporters, said UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan spoke to Netanyahu ten days before the attack and told him that Hamas was planning a major operation.

Netanyahu’s office called the report by the left-leaning newspaper “an absolute lie” and denied he spoke to the Emirati leader at that time.

Gadi Eisenkot, a former military commander who has emerged as Netanyahu’s top rival in upcoming October 27 elections, accused the long-serving prime minister of evading responsibility for security lapses and resorting to “pathetic” excuses, such as saying he was not woken up soon enough on the morning of the attack.

“Netanyahu received dozens of warnings for October 7 and ignored them all. He is unfit,” Eisenkot wrote on X.

Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister also running in elections, said Netanyahu “bears personal and direct responsibility” for the deaths on October 7, the deadliest attack in Israeli history.

“Netanyahu cannot continue to serve in his position for even one more minute,” Bennett said.

The leader of the centre-left Democrats Party, Yair Golan, accused Netanyahu of “endangering Israel”.

“The stories about ‘no one woke me up’ are over. You knew, you ignored, you failed, you are to blame,” he said in a video posted on social media.

Many Israelis have demanded an independent state commission of inquiry into the security lapses that failed to prevent Hamas’s Oct 7, 2023 raid.

Haaretz said that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, later killed by Israel, had warned a former Palestinian official that the fighters were preparing “a terrifying operation” which he described as an “earthquake”.

The former Palestinian official relayed the message to an Emirati adviser, who passed it on to the Emirati leader who then called Netanyahu, according to the newspaper.

Meanwhile, the UAE’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday it would not comment on an Israeli media report. In a statement, the ministry said “the UAE government does not comment on media stories or speculation”.

Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2026