World
• Analysis
Egypt Warned Israel of Hamas Attack in 67-Minute Visit, Investigation Finds
Egypt warned Israel of a major Hamas attack when intelligence chief Abbas Kamel made a rare, discreet visit on September 26, 2023, spending about 67 minutes in the country, an investigation by The Atlantic staff writer Vivian Salama finds. A former Israeli official says top Israeli officials could not have met Egypt's intelligence chief without Benjamin Netanyahu being aware.
By Haut Monde Post
• October 2, 2026
• 2 Min Read
A 67-minute warning
The date carried its own weight. On September 26, 2023, Israel's national security establishment gathered to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, one of the country's greatest intelligence failures. That same day, Abbas Kamel, then Egypt's intelligence chief, arrived on what the investigation describes as an exceptionally rare and discreet visit, carrying a stark warning about the dangerous situation unfolding in Gaza.
Salama, an attorney who has reported from more than 85 countries, spent months reconstructing the visit. Her account rests on:
- •Israeli and independent flight data
- •sources on both sides of the Egyptian-Israeli border
- •people later briefed on the meeting
By that reconstruction, Kamel spent approximately 67 minutes in Israel and met with senior Israeli national security officials. She laid out the findings in a televised interview published on October 2, 2026.
What Israel did with the warning
The investigation turns on what happened to the warning once it entered Israel's political and security machinery, not simply on whether a warning existed. A former Israeli official told Salama:
There is no world where top Israeli officials meet with the head of Egyptian intelligence and Benjamin Netanyahu is not aware.
Other warnings, no adequate response
Egypt's alert was not the only one Israel received, the report notes. In the months and weeks before October 7:
- •Israeli surveillance, intelligence and military personnel were themselves detecting unusual Hamas activity in Gaza
- •those detections included exercises and preparations with striking similarities to the attack that ultimately unfolded
- •Haaretz has also reported recently that the UAE's leader separately warned Netanyahu of the danger from Gaza
None of these warnings produced an adequate response, the report adds. Israel's later military inquiries have acknowledged profound failures in assessing Hamas's capabilities and intentions, and in recognizing the scale and imminence of the threat.
The questions still open
For Salama, the findings raise a wider puzzle: how critical information can exist within a security system and still fail to become effective action. Pressure is mounting for an independent investigation into the failures surrounding October 7. She is still chasing who met with Kamel, what information reached Netanyahu and his advisers, and why the warnings produced no stronger response.
