By Ephraim Agbo
From the “Jericho Wall” battle plan to Egyptian intelligence warnings and a disputed UAE warning, the evidence points to something more complicated than simply saying Israel “knew” an attack was coming.
The most provocative question surrounding the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack is also one of the easiest to get wrong: Did Israel know the attack was coming? The evidence now makes a simpler answer difficult. Israel clearly possessed significant warning information before October 7. Israeli authorities had obtained Hamas's detailed “Jericho Wall” battle plan more than a year before the attack. Israeli intelligence officers observed Hamas training for operations that closely resembled that plan. And new reporting in September 2026 indicates that Egypt's intelligence chief personally travelled to Israel days before the attack with a warning that Hamas appeared to be preparing an unprecedented operation. There is also a disputed account that United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Hamas preparations in late September 2023. Netanyahu has denied receiving such a warning. But none of this establishes that Israel knew the exact date, time, scale or precise method of the October 7 attack. That distinction matters.
The more difficult—and arguably more important—question is not whether Israel possessed information. It is why so much information failed to produce the level of alarm that the eventual attack demanded.
The Egyptian Warning
One of the most consequential new pieces of reporting comes from The Atlantic. According to an investigation by journalist Vivian Salama, Abbas Kamel, then Egypt's intelligence chief, secretly travelled to Israel on September 26, 2023—just 11 days before the Hamas attack. The visit was highly unusual. Kamel reportedly flew from Cairo to Ben Gurion Airport aboard a small aircraft linked to Egyptian intelligence and remained in Israel for roughly an hour.
According to people familiar with the episode, Kamel conveyed a serious warning: Hamas appeared to be preparing for a major and unprecedented operation. The warning reportedly did not contain the precise date of October 7 or the exact method by which Hamas would attack. Salama's reporting indicates that Kamel himself did not know those details. That makes the warning important without making it a crystal ball. It was apparently a warning about intent and preparation, not advance knowledge of the exact attack schedule.
More recent reporting has also described additional Egyptian warnings in the period immediately preceding October 7, including an alleged direct communication involving Netanyahu. Those accounts remain matters of reporting rather than independently established fact, and the Egyptian and Israeli sides have not publicly confirmed all of the details. But if the reported sequence is accurate, Egypt was repeatedly communicating concern about Hamas activity.
That raises a difficult question: At what point does a series of warnings cease to be background intelligence and become an operational warning?
The UAE Warning Is More Complicated
The reported warning from Mohammed bin Zayed is even more contentious. Haaretz reported that the UAE president warned Netanyahu in late September 2023 that Hamas was preparing a major attack. The Atlantic subsequently reported that its own investigation independently corroborated the broad account through multiple sources. Netanyahu has denied receiving such a warning.
The dispute is now particularly significant because Haaretz has reported that Netanyahu secretly travelled to the UAE in September 2026 and met with Mohammed bin Zayed amid the controversy. The newspaper reported that Netanyahu sought a denial of the earlier account. The UAE Foreign Ministry declined to comment specifically on the reports but referred to its continuing direct relationship with Israel.
That does not prove that the alleged 2023 conversation happened. It does, however, make the episode relevant to the broader question of what warnings were circulating among regional governments before October 7.
Then There Was the “Jericho Wall”
The Egyptian and UAE accounts are recent additions to a much older story. The most powerful evidence that Israeli intelligence had significant information about Hamas's intentions is the existence of the so-called “Jericho Wall” plan.
Israeli authorities obtained Hamas's roughly 40-page operational blueprint more than a year before October 7. The document described an attack involving rocket fire, drones disabling surveillance systems and automated weapons, fighters breaking through the Gaza barrier, and armed men entering Israel by multiple routes. It also contemplated attacks on military bases and Israeli communities and the taking of hostages.
Much of that subsequently happened. The document did not, however, provide the date of the attack. And this is where the story becomes more revealing than the simple claim that “Israel knew.” Israeli officials reportedly assessed the plan as too ambitious for Hamas to execute.
In other words, the problem was not necessarily that the intelligence community failed to obtain information. The problem was that the information collided with an existing belief about what Hamas was capable of doing. That conclusion is supported by extensive reporting cited by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation. Israeli officials had the plan, yet treated it as aspirational because they believed an operation of that scale was beyond Hamas's capabilities. That is a very different kind of intelligence failure.
The Warning Was There. The Interpretation Failed.
This may be the most important distinction in understanding October 7. Intelligence does not consist simply of collecting facts. It requires interpretation. A state can possess the information necessary to identify a threat and still fail because analysts and commanders interpret that information through an incorrect model of the enemy. That appears to be central to the October 7 story.
Israeli intelligence had evidence of Hamas's ambitions. It had evidence of training. It had a detailed battle plan. It had indicators of unusual preparations. And, according to recent reporting, it received serious warnings from Egypt shortly before the attack. Yet the prevailing assessment continued to treat a massive Hamas assault as unlikely.
A July 2023 warning is particularly revealing. According to the New York Times investigation, a veteran Unit 8200 intelligence analyst warned that Hamas had conducted an extensive training exercise that closely resembled the “Jericho Wall” scenario. She argued that the exercise demonstrated that Hamas was developing the capacity to implement the plan. The concern was not accepted as sufficient evidence that the full scenario was about to occur.
Three months later, Hamas carried out an operation that closely followed many of the elements described in the earlier plan. Israel knew pieces of the story. It apparently failed to assemble those pieces into the correct picture.
The “Concept” That Hamas Was Contained
Behind the intelligence failure was a broader strategic assumption. For years, Israel's approach to Hamas was influenced by the belief that the organization could be contained through deterrence, economic incentives, periodic military operations and controlled confrontation. The assumption was not necessarily that Hamas posed no danger. It was that Hamas was manageable. That distinction proved catastrophic.
If analysts believe an enemy is fundamentally deterred, evidence of preparations for a major attack can be interpreted as signalling, posturing or another limited escalation rather than preparation for war.
That creates a dangerous feedback loop. The assumption determines how the evidence is interpreted, and the interpretation then reinforces the assumption. Israel's own subsequent investigations have increasingly pointed toward this broader conceptual failure.
A recent account of the IDF's overarching review identifies six major causes of the October 7 failure, including a conceptual failure in understanding Hamas and Gaza, an intelligence failure, failure to properly address the “Jericho Wall” plan, organizational problems, a persistent gap between the threat and Israel's response, and flawed decision-making. It also concluded that significant warning information existed but was not properly analysed.
Technology Did Not Replace Intelligence
There is another lesson hidden inside the October 7 failure: technology can create an illusion of security. Israel had built an extraordinarily sophisticated security architecture around Gaza. Surveillance systems, cameras, sensors, automated weapons and the border barrier were designed to make a large-scale infiltration extraordinarily difficult. But Hamas studied the system.
On October 7, drones were used against surveillance and communications infrastructure, while fighters attacked multiple points simultaneously. The result was not simply a technological failure. It was a strategic failure involving technology.
Israel's technological superiority created confidence that the border could be monitored and defended with fewer troops and less conventional preparation. Hamas exploited the weaknesses created by that architecture. The New York Times investigation found that Hamas deliberately targeted surveillance and communications infrastructure, creating blind spots that complicated Israel's response.
The lesson is uncomfortable for any technologically advanced military: A system designed to prevent surprise can itself become a source of surprise if the enemy understands the system better than its designers understand the enemy.
What We Still Do Not Know
Several crucial questions remain unanswered.
Did Netanyahu personally receive the Egyptian warning?
Did he receive the alleged UAE warning?
Who within the Israeli security establishment knew about each warning?
How were the warnings classified?
Why was the “Jericho Wall” plan not treated as an operational possibility?
Why did intelligence assessments continue to regard Hamas's capability as insufficient despite increasingly sophisticated training?
And most importantly, when did the evidence become strong enough that the prevailing assessment should have been abandoned?
Those are questions for a serious investigation rather than political speculation.
They also explain why the debate over an independent state commission of inquiry remains significant inside Israel. As of September 2026, Israel still does not have a state commission equivalent to the one established after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, while political disagreement continues over the form such an investigation should take.
October 7 Was Not a Failure of One Warning
The emerging picture is therefore more disturbing than the idea of a single missed phone call. It looks increasingly like a chain of institutional failures. Information existed. Warnings existed. Plans existed. Training indicators existed.
But the system repeatedly interpreted those signals through a framework that assumed Hamas was deterred, constrained or incapable of executing the kind of operation it was planning. That is how a security state can become vulnerable without becoming blind. It sees. It collects. It analyses. And still gets the meaning wrong.
The ultimate lesson of October 7 may therefore not be that Israel had advance knowledge of the attack. The evidence does not establish that. The deeper lesson is potentially more consequential: Israel had enough warning signs to challenge its assumptions about Hamas—but the assumptions proved stronger than the warnings.
And that leaves perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all: How many warnings does a state need before ignoring them becomes a failure in itself?
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