Netanyahu's secret trip to Abu Dhabi raises more suspicions of prior warnings to 7-O

Tel-AvivAt the Tel Aviv Hostages Square, about 300 people listened this Monday evening to testimonies from relatives and survivors of the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. They were wearing t-shirts, caps, and pins with photographs of the hostages. Amidst banners with names and faces, a recreation of a tunnel recalled the conditions in which the kidnapped were held in Gaza. A man dressed as the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, held a banner with a blunt message: "Nobody told me!".The protest comes at a time when the question of what the Israeli government knew before the Hamas attack has returned to the center of Israeli politics. This time the debate passes through Abu Dhabi. On Sunday, the prime minister traveled in secret to the United Arab Emirates to meet with its president, Mohamed bin Zayed. The reason for the visit was to ask him to deny that he had warned him before October 7th that Hamas was preparing an attack, according to sources cited by Associated Press.Netanyahu's office has denied this version and explained that the visit aimed to “strengthen bilateral relations and address regional challenges.” The Emirates government has given a similar version of the visit, without making any mention of a specific request from the Israeli leader.The visit, lasting about four hours and without leaving the airport, as reported by the Israeli media outlet Channel 12, comes amidst weeks of controversy. A few days ago, the newspaper Haaretz published that the Emirates had allegedly alerted Israel that Hamas was preparing a major operation against the country. According to this information, Bin Zayed had personally communicated the warning to Netanyahu, but the notice was not sent to the main Israeli intelligence agencies or the army. Netanyahu denies this version.

Added to this is that The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Abbas Kamel, the then head of Egyptian intelligence, had allegedly called Netanyahu to convey a third warning about the risk of an attack. Netanyahu has also denied this and has held the security services responsible for not having communicated the warnings to him. The then head of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security and intelligence service, Ronen Bar, for his part, has announced legal action against the prime minister and has demanded that the documents and testimonies regarding the information that reached Netanyahu before the attack be made public.Outrage a month before the elections

The dispute over who knew what and when, therefore, remains open. And it comes less than a month before the October 27th elections, the first since the Hamas attacks, and an election in which Netanyahu faces a campaign marked by criticism from a part of the population and by accusations from opposition leaders, who attribute political responsibilities for the attacks to him. In Tel Aviv, this discussion has been reaching the streets for days. For three days, various families have been gathering at the hostages' square to share their experiences and those of the victims and to keep alive the demand for an investigation into the state's responsibilities.“How is it that he didn't protect us?”, asks Gabriela Leimberg, in reference to the prime minister, after having been kidnapped with several members of her family at the Nir Yitzhak kibbutz, a rural community in southern Israel. During her captivity, she explains, her kidnappers told her that, once released, she should return to Argentina, from where she had emigrated almost thirty years ago, because they were preparing for another October 7. “The next massacre cannot be avoided if what happened is not investigated”, she demands.

Michel Illouz has played back the last call from her son, Guy, who was kidnapped at the Nova festival and murdered in captivity. "Enough with the lies," she demands. "Bibi, everyone called you and you did nothing," complained the woman, who adds: "You did nothing with that information and I don't have a son because of you." For Illouz, the discussion can no longer be reduced to an intelligence failure: she speaks of abandonment and demands political accountability.Almost three years after terrorist attacks that left nearly 1,200 dead, the Netanyahu government has still not established a state commission of inquiry. Last week the Supreme Court postponed until after the elections a decision on the creation of the commission and gave the government until January 15, 2027, to report on how it plans to investigate the errors that preceded the Hamas attacks. Meanwhile, Netanyahu's secret trip to Abu Dhabi has once again put the focus on one of the questions that this investigation should clarify: what warnings reached Israel and what was done about them. At Hostages Square, this is the question that still has no answer.