Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel secretly flew to Israel on September 26, 2023, delivering an urgent warning that Hamas was preparing a major attack and urging economic concessions, according to an investigation by The Atlantic. The Prime Minister’s Office rejected the allegations as recycled political manipulation.
Eleven days before the Hamas-led October 7 massacre, a private aircraft linked to Egyptian intelligence landed at Ben-Gurion Airport. On board was Abbas Kamel, then heading Egypt’s General Intelligence Service and serving as a close confidant to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The visit, detailed in a wide-ranging investigation, lasted just 67 minutes before the chartered Cessna returned to Cairo.
The 67-Minute Visit and the Warning at Ben-Gurion Airport
The aircraft touched down in an isolated section of the airport typically reserved for sensitive diplomatic and security missions. Flight logs from the Israel Airports Authority and independent tracking services confirmed the movement verified the aircraft’s brief stay. Kamel carried no specific attack date, target list, or operational blueprints for the assault that would follow. Instead, he urged Israeli leaders to grant Hamas economic concessions to defuse escalating tensions in the Gaza Strip.
Officials from seven countries briefed on the diplomatic mission later said that the mere dispatch of Egypt’s top spy chief should have triggered immediate, highest-level concern.
If you don’t change course, Gaza is going to blow up in your faces.
Former Israeli official, via The Atlantic
Participants familiar with the diplomatic outreach noted that the messenger was the message, emphasizing that senior Israeli figures could not have met with Egypt’s intelligence chief without Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knowing.
Timing Against the Yom Kippur War Anniversary
The clandestine flight coincided with national commemorations marking the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. As Kamel’s plane sat on the tarmac, Netanyahu spoke at a ceremony in Jerusalem, warning against underestimating threats and citing the 1973 surprise attack as a historic lesson in intelligence failures. According to his public schedule, Netanyahu attended a classified briefing immediately after the commemoration and soon after approved limited economic measures for Gaza.
The Egyptian outreach did not stop with Kamel’s departure. Cairo continued transmitting warnings to Israel as late as October 5, just two days before the assault, expressing mounting alarm that the situation had become unsustainable.
Political Denials and Previous Regional Warnings
Israeli political leadership pushed back firmly against the reporting. Tzachi Hanegbi, who served as national security adviser at the time, denied that Kamel had visited Israel or that Egypt had delivered such a warning. The Prime Minister’s Office issued a sharp rejection, asserting that the investigation relied on recycled claims intended to sway the Israeli public.
was denied at the time and is being recycled to manipulate the Israeli public.
Prime Minister’s Office, Government of Israel
The office added that in the months preceding October 7, Prime Minister Netanyahu neither met nor spoke with Abbas Kamel, maintaining that no intelligence official relayed any such warning to him. Netanyahu previously dismissed similar allegations as a claim that was already debunked at the beginning of the war
. Alongside the Egyptian contacts, reports indicated that United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed also warned Netanyahu in late September about Yahya Sinwar planning a major operation during a direct phone call, though Netanyahu’s office disputed those accounts as well.
The Unresolved Questions Inside Israel’s Security System
Nearly three years after the attack on October 7, the handling of pre-attack intelligence remains deeply contested. While officials from multiple nations argue that regional warnings should have shattered Israel’s sense of security, the exact path of Kamel’s message within the defense apparatus remains missing from the official record.