Netanyahu Is Said to Have Been Warned About Hamas Attack Before Oct. 7 The warning from the leader of the United Arab Emirates, which lacked specific details about the nature of an attack, never reached the chiefs of Israel’s security establishment, Israeli officials said.

As Israelis prepare to vote next month, the question of who bears responsibility for failing to prevent the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023 has become a dominant issue in one of Israel’s most consequential campaigns in history.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seeking an unprecedented seventh term, has placed the blame on national security officials, while his critics have said he must personally answer for the failures. When Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, reported earlier this month that Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, the president of the United Arab Emirates, had given Mr. Netanyahu a secret warning that Hamas was planning a major attack, the question took on even greater urgency.

Mr. Netanyahu has denied the report. But a person who said they had spoken with Sheikh Mohammed and another person who said they had been briefed by someone on the call between the two leaders told The New York Times that the Emirati leader had secretly reported to Mr. Netanyahu that Hamas was considering a major attack.

The warning from the Emirati leader, however, never reached the leaders of Israel’s security establishment, according to five former senior Israeli officials. Mr. Netanyahu gathered his security chiefs days later, on Oct. 1, 2023, for a meeting about the situation in the Gaza Strip, and never mentioned the warning, according to minutes of the meeting reviewed by The Times.

Instead, he told them that the goal should be to maintain calm in Gaza, and he pushed back when some security officials said that Israel should consider military strikes against senior Hamas leaders in Gaza who were overseeing attacks against Israelis in the West Bank, the minutes show.