The Atlantic reports:

When Israel’s leaders gathered in Jerusalem on September 26, 2023, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the surprise assault by Syria and Egypt as a cautionary tale, one of missed intelligence warnings and self-delusion. “We do not underestimate any threat,” he said.

Roughly two hours before Netanyahu took the stage, a chartered Cessna jet linked to Egypt’s intelligence service had touched down at Ben Gurion Airport, about 30 miles away. The jet rolled to a stop in an isolated section of the airport used for sensitive diplomatic and security missions. Abbas Kamel, Egypt’s intelligence chief and one of the region’s most influential security officials, had come to Israel on a most sensitive mission.

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood–aligned terrorist group that controlled Gaza, appeared to be mobilizing for a major attack, Kamel said, according to Israeli, Egyptian, Arab, U.S., and European officials who were briefed about his visit after October 7. The window to prevent a disaster was closing. He recommended that the Israeli government grant Hamas economic concessions to avert conflict. His message, according to one former Israeli official later briefed on the visit, was: If you don’t change course, Gaza is going to blow up in your faces.

Kamel didn’t provide Israeli officials with a date or specific information on what turned out to be a multipronged attack on Israel less than two weeks later, on October 7. And it’s not clear exactly with whom he met. The Egyptian plane remained on the ground in Israel for 67 minutes, according to an Israeli-airport-authority flight log, before returning to Cairo. (Independent flight-tracking applications confirm the plane’s journey.)

What the Israeli officials did with Kamel’s warning remains an open question three years after the most devastating surprise attack in Israel’s history. But officials from seven different countries I spoke with said that Kamel’s visit should have set off alarms across the top ranks of the Israeli government. Netanyahu attended a classified briefing following the Yom Kippur War commemoration, according to his public schedule, and soon after approved some economic concessions to Hamas. Officials who spoke with me stressed that the mere presence of the Egyptian intelligence chief in Israel should have demonstrated the urgency of the issue. “The messenger was the message,” a former Israeli official told me. “There is no world,” this official said, where top Israeli officials meet with the head of Egyptian intelligence “and Bibi is not aware.” [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports:

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. [Continue reading…]