Egypt & Africa

Egypt’s Spy Chief Warned Israel 11 Days Before October 7. Netanyahu Chose Not to Listen

Abbas Kamel’s secret 67-minute visit to Israel before October 7 was not betrayal. Egypt warned that Gaza would explode. Netanyahu had the warnings and let the explosion come, and Egypt is paying the price.

Illustration: a lone business jet on an isolated airport apron at dusk, as smoke rises on the horizon.AI-generated illustration (Google Gemini) for Silent Dossier

Silent Dossier Editorial DeskSeptember 26, 20267 min read

In this article

A 67-minute visit that Israel still denies

On September 26, 2023, a chartered Cessna linked to Egypt’s General Intelligence Service landed at Ben Gurion Airport and taxied to an isolated area used for sensitive diplomatic and security flights, away from passengers and cargo crews. On board was Major General Abbas Kamel, then Egypt’s intelligence chief and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s closest security adviser. Sixty-seven minutes later the plane was on its way back to Cairo.

The trip came 11 days before Hamas’s October 7 attack. It has now been laid out in an investigation by The Atlantic, summarised by The Jerusalem Post, which draws on Israeli, Egyptian, Arab, American and European officials briefed on the visit. According to that account, Kamel met Israeli intelligence officials, not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it was his first trip to Israel since 2021.

His message was blunt. Gaza was close to exploding, and Israel needed to change course, including economic steps to ease pressure on the Strip. One former Israeli official summarised it as: “If you don’t change course, Gaza is going to explode in your face.” He gave no date, no targets and no operational detail. According to The Atlantic, Egyptian messages in the same urgent, non-specific tone continued until October 5, two days before the attack.

The same day Kamel landed, Netanyahu marked the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a war he described as a lesson in the dangers of missed intelligence warnings and self-delusion. Netanyahu’s office has denied receiving any Egyptian warning. Tzachi Hanegbi, then head of the National Security Council, told The Atlantic that Kamel never visited Israel at all.

Key takeaways

Egypt’s intelligence chief flew to Israel 11 days before October 7 to warn that Gaza was about to explode, without a date or operational details, because Cairo did not have them.

Delivering that warning was mediation, not betrayal. Egypt was doing its job as the go-between and trying to prevent a war that would land on its own border.

Israel received warnings from Egypt, the UAE and US intelligence and did not act. Netanyahu let the explosion come and has used it ever since as the fuel for a war without end.

Egypt has paid a heavy price: about $10 billion in lost Suez Canal revenue, Israeli tanks on its border and open threats to push Gaza’s population south toward Sinai.

Analysis

Why the Kamel visit was not treason

The story will be used against Egypt. Egyptian television will avoid it, and the space will be filled by Muslim Brotherhood-aligned channels abroad, which will present it as proof that Cairo tipped off Israel to protect it. That reading collapses on the facts in the report itself.

First, Kamel did not have the plan to hand over. Hamas had been preparing October 7 for years. Nobody who knew what was coming would have answered it with a request for economic concessions. The fact that Egypt’s proposed remedy was easing the pressure on Gaza shows that Cairo had a picture of rising danger, not the operation itself.

Second, he was relaying the mood Egypt was hearing from Gaza. The Atlantic’s account says Hamas itself had signalled to Egypt that the situation was reaching breaking point. Egypt is the mediator between Israel and Hamas. Carrying that message to the Israelis and telling them to defuse it is exactly what a mediator is for. Kamel’s previous high-profile work with Israel was brokering ceasefires between Israel and Hamas.

Third, the visit itself was the message. The head of Egyptian intelligence does not fly to Tel Aviv on a chartered jet, off the diplomatic record, for small talk. His presence alone told Israel that Cairo saw a disaster coming. Sisi certainly knew he was there, and he sent his most trusted man precisely so that the warning could not be ignored.

Even a reader who distrusts every source in this story arrives at the same place. All Egypt said was that Gaza would explode unless Israel changed course. Israel did not change course.

Israel was warned from every direction

Kamel was not the only one. In September, Haaretz reported that UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed phoned Netanyahu about 10 days before the attack and warned him that Yahya Sinwar was preparing a “huge surprise” and that Israel should “expect an earthquake.” According to Haaretz, Netanyahu replied that Hamas was focused on the West Bank and that Israel was ready for anything. He did not brief his security chiefs. Netanyahu calls the report fabricated and has threatened to sue. The Atlantic says multiple officials confirmed the call took place.

Washington was sounding the alarm too. US intelligence assessments dated September 28 and October 5, 2023, warned that Hamas was poised to escalate and that the risk of violence was rising. They expected a heavy rocket barrage rather than a ground invasion, but the direction was clear.

Put these together. Egypt, the UAE and the United States all told Israel, in the same fortnight, that Gaza was about to blow. The country with the most sophisticated surveillance of Gaza in the world, whose prime minister had just lectured his nation on ignoring intelligence warnings, did nothing. Israel did not fail to see October 7. Netanyahu knew the storm was coming and let it come.

Analysis

The fuel for a war without end

Look at what followed. Hamas’s attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages, and it was a real atrocity for the families who lost people that day. But set that loss against what it bought Netanyahu’s government. It has fought in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen. It has taken new ground in Syria, pushed back into southern Lebanon and turned “self-defence” into a permanent licence.

It is the film Israel wanted to watch. In one day it went from an occupying power under growing criticism to a victim entitled to do anything. Had the warnings been public on October 8, Netanyahu would likely have been driven from office. Instead he became a war leader.

The cost has fallen on others. Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which reported 74,016 deaths on September 26, 2026, with people still being killed after the October 2025 ceasefire. The World Bank, the UN and the EU put the cost of rebuilding the Strip at about $70 billion, money nobody is lining up to pay while the Gulf itself is under fire. October 7 was not a victory for the Palestinians. It was a trap for the whole Arab world, and Israel walked it open.

Analysis

Egypt tried to stop it and paid the price

No Arab country has paid more for a war it tried to prevent. President Sisi has said Egypt lost about $10 billion in Suez Canal revenue as Red Sea shipping collapsed. Egypt received Gaza’s wounded. And Israel seized the Philadelphi Corridor on Gaza’s border with Egypt in May 2024 and moved in armour, although the 1979 peace treaty bars tanks and artillery from that zone, as RUSI has noted.

Israel now complains loudly about Egypt’s military presence in Sinai while its own tanks and guns sit on Egypt’s border. That is the logic of an aggressor that accuses its neighbour of what it is doing itself.

The threat is no longer hidden. On September 22, 2026, at a memorial for the 1973 war, Defence Minister Israel Katz said that if a single Israeli soldier or civilian is kidnapped, “the entire city of Gaza, with its houses and terror towers, will be evacuated southward with its million residents.” Southward means toward Rafah and the Egyptian border. The pressure on Sinai is exactly what Egypt has feared since 2023, and it is why Sisi again rejected any displacement of Palestinians this month. As Sisi warned at the start of the war, emptying Gaza into Sinai would be followed by emptying the West Bank into Jordan, and the Palestinian state the whole world talks about would become impossible.

The October 2025 ceasefire, sealed at Sharm el-Sheikh, has not stopped this. Israel does not want to implement it, and President Donald Trump, who needs Israel’s supporters before the US midterms, is not forcing it to. With Israel voting on October 27, Katz and Netanyahu are competing to sound tougher.

What Egypt must say now

Kamel left the intelligence service in October 2024 and became a presidential adviser. His trip should now be defended in the open, not left to rumour. Egypt went to Israel to prevent a war. It warned in plain words that Gaza would explode. Israel had those words and chose to let the explosion come, because the war that followed served Netanyahu’s government.

That is the real scandal in The Atlantic’s story. It is not that an Egyptian general landed at Ben Gurion. It is that he was ignored. Egypt should say so loudly and refuse any settlement of this war that ends with Gaza’s people pushed toward Sinai.

For how Israel has told another story of intelligence blindness on the Egyptian front, read Israel’s account of its 1973 spy flight over the Suez Canal.