Numerous media reports indicate that, prior to the Hamas raid on Israel on 7 October 2023, which caused extensive casualties, Egyptian Intelligence Director Abbas Kamel warned the Israeli side several times, the most critical of which was to fly to Israel in person. After months of in-depth investigation, Vivian Salama, a reporter for Atlantic Monthly, added full details of the incident to multiple sources, including Israel, Egypt, the Arab world, Europe and the United States.
Timeline for three warnings
According to the Atlantic Monthly and other media reports, at least three warnings were issued to Israel by the Egyptian side. The exact form of the first and second warnings was not previously disclosed in detail, but the Jerusalem Post reported that Netanyahu had received three warnings from Egypt on the situation in Gaza before 7 October. The third and most urgent one occurred on 26 September 2023 — only 11 days after the attack. Another i24NEWS reported that Egypt had warned Netanyahu even 48 hours before the attack, indicating an escalation in the continuity and urgency of early warning.
Details of the 26 September covert flight
On 26 September 2023, Israel held the 50th Anniversary of the War of Atonement Day, at which Netanyahu delivered a speech stressing the need for Israel to remain vigilant and not to turn a blind eye to the threats around it. However, just about two hours before his arrival, a small Cessna aircraft landed in an extremely hidden area of isolation at Ben-Gurion International Airport.
Through the tracking of flight records and cross-checking by various parties, Salama confirmed that the aircraft ' s flight plan was to fly from Cairo to Ben-Gurion, land in a restricted area and return to Cairo after approximately 67 minutes. A number of sources confirmed that Abbas Kamel, then head of the Egyptian intelligence service, was on board. Salama himself stated that it had taken her months to link the two leads to the Egyptian Director of Intelligence, since the identity of the aircraft had never been disclosed, although the Israeli media had previously reported the flight.
Details of the warning
During the meeting, Carmel conveyed a grim message to Israeli security officials: Hamas is preparing for an unprecedented and major attack, and the situation has reached the point of "at first sight". The report quoted a former Israeli official who had been briefed as suggesting that the Israeli Government provide economic concessions to Hamas to ease tensions in Gaza and avoid an escalation of the conflict. He warned that Israel could face catastrophic consequences if it did not change course.
However, Carmel himself was not aware of the exact date of the attack and the specific type of attack. His message was that Hamas was mobilizing in Gaza on an unprecedented scale and that war was imminent.
Israeli denial and internal dispute
Despite detailed media coverage, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Government denied having received any warning prior to the attack. Both The Jerusalem Post and Yahoo News reported that Netanyahu had publicly rejected Atlantic Monthly reports that Egypt had issued warnings.
More notably, Haáretz reported that the former Israeli Defence Minister claimed that he had learned from public media reports that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates had issued related warnings — This means that these warnings may not be effectively communicated and communicated within the Israeli hierarchy. This discovery has further exacerbated external challenges to Israeli intelligence systems and decision-making mechanisms.
What does this mean to different people?
For the ordinary Israeli population, this report has once again generated deep mistrust of the Government ' s security early warning mechanisms and emergency response capacity. Three years ago, the raid resulted in the death of about 1,200 people and the kidnapping of a large number of people, while the early warning information that has come to light has led the public to question: If intelligence services do receive warnings, why have they not been transformed into effective defence?
As far as the Middle East peace process and international relations are concerned, this incident reveals the complexity of regional intelligence cooperation — the chain of decision-making by the receiving parties may break even if key security messages are transmitted among allies. Egypt, as an Arab country with peaceful relations with Israel, has taken the initiative of issuing warnings itself to show that the Cairo side's judgement of Hamas's movement has reached an extremely serious level.
For the international community and foreign policy researchers, the incident provided a typical case study of the relationship between intelligence-sharing and decision-making failures. The Sarama investigation shows that early warning information exists conclusively, but how it is received, assessed and acted upon remains an outstanding issue.
At present, the full picture of events remains dependent on the disclosure of more official information. In the absence of formal confirmation of all the details by the Governments of Israel and Egypt, the public can only understand the incident by relying on the factual framework restored by the media investigation. Over the past three years, the question "how the Israeli side used (or did not use) these early warning messages" has remained one of the most central unresolved puzzles in security research in the Middle East.