Benjamin Netanyahu announced Wednesday that he will sue the newspaper Haaretz and is demanding a criminal investigation into the journalists behind a report claiming the Israeli prime minister was personally warned by the president of the United Arab Emirates that Hamas was preparing a devastating attack — ten days before it happened on October 7, 2023.

According to the Haaretz investigation, drawn from the forthcoming book "Hostages: 843 Days of Abandonment" by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruti Yuval, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed placed an unusual 45-minute call to Netanyahu in late September 2023. Bin Zayed had learned through a Palestinian intermediary that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was bragging of a coming "zilzal" — an earthquake — and warned Netanyahu it could mean a major offensive that would destabilize the entire region.

Netanyahu, the report says, brushed the warning off, telling bin Zayed that "Jerusalem was on top of things in Gaza" and that Israel was prepared for any scenario. Crucially, he is alleged to have never passed the warning to his own security chiefs. Both former Shin Bet director Ronen Bar and then-IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi told Haaretz they were never briefed on any call between Netanyahu and the Emirati leader.

"No Trace of Any Call"

Netanyahu rejected the account outright on X, insisting no such conversation with bin Zayed ever took place between early September 2023 and October 7, and arguing his office found no documentation of it — which he says any real head-of-state call would have left behind. His office branded the story an "absolute lie," and Likud went further, accusing Haaretz and opposition leader Yair Golan of "blatant foreign interference" in Israel's upcoming election, due October 27.

"This is a sinister libel with clear political timing, as part of the left's election campaign," Netanyahu said, announcing the lawsuit.

Haaretz is not backing down. "We stand behind the publication," the paper said, and a source in the UAE reportedly confirmed the account of the call to the Times of Israel separately. The story has also been complicated for Netanyahu by former ally-turned-rival Naftali Bennett, who has told associates the call did happen and that bin Zayed informed him of it directly, according to multiple Israeli outlets.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Egyptian intelligence separately warned Netanyahu of a "terrifying operation" being planned — a warning he is said to have dismissed on the belief Hamas would confine itself to the West Bank. The UAE's foreign ministry has not denied the call outright, saying only that it does not comment on "speculation regarding conversations between government leaders."

The report has landed as a political grenade less than seven weeks before Israelis go to the polls, reviving the most explosive question hanging over Netanyahu's decade-plus in power: what he knew before roughly 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage in the deadliest single day in Israel's history. Opposition figures, including former war cabinet minister Gadi Eisenkot, say the report deepens Netanyahu's direct responsibility for the security failures of that day. A defamation suit, if filed, would put Netanyahu in the unusual position of asking an Israeli court to adjudicate his own conduct in the run-up to October 7 — under oath, and in the middle of an election campaign.