Egyptian Intelligence Chief Warned Israel of Gaza Escalation Before Oct 7

Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel secretly flew to Israel on September 26, 2023, delivering an urgent warning 11 days before the October 7 Hamas attack that Gaza was on the verge of a major escalation, according to a newly published investigative report from The Atlantic.

The disclosure places fresh scrutiny on what Israeli leadership knew in the weeks before the Hamas-led massacre, which left about 1,200 people dead and 251 taken captive. According to flight logs from the Israel Airports Authority and independent tracking data cited in the reporting, Kamel arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport aboard a chartered Cessna aircraft linked to Egyptian intelligence. His plane remained on the ground in an isolated diplomatic area for just 67 minutes before heading back to Cairo.

The Secret Visit and the Warning About Gaza

Kamel made the unpublicized trip on the very day Israeli officials gathered in Jerusalem to mark the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Briefed officials from seven countries told the magazine that the head of the General Intelligence Service came to urge immediate action, recommending that Israel grant economic concessions to Hamas in an attempt to avert a wider conflict. A former Israeli official briefed on the meeting summarized the Egyptian message with a stark phrase: If you don’t change course, Gaza is going to blow up in your faces.

Despite the urgency of the mission, the warning did not provide a specific date, targeted locations, or detailed operational intelligence about the multi-front invasion that followed. Egyptian warnings continued through diplomatic channels as the crisis deepened, with Cairo transmitting another alert as late as October 5, just two days before the assault.

Official Denials and Political Fallout

The Prime Minister’s Office rejected the new revelations, issuing a sharp statement that dismissed the report as recycled claims meant to sway public opinion during the election season. The PMO maintained that Netanyahu never met or spoke with Kamel during the months preceding the October 7 attack and that Egypt had officially denied warning Israel just days after the massacre occurred. Tzachi Hanegbi, who served as head of the National Security Council at the time, also denied to the magazine that Kamel had visited Israel or that any such warning was delivered.

Egyptian Intelligence Chief Warned Israel of Gaza Escalation Before Oct 7 — Photo: ynetnews.com

The revelation intersects with other regional warnings that have emerged in recent reporting. Haaretz and other outlets previously detailed a 45-minute phone call between United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed and Netanyahu in the weeks before the massacre, during which the Emirati leader explicitly warned that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning a major operation. According to those accounts, Netanyahu reacted calmly and reassured the UAE president that Israel had the situation under control.

Regional Signals and the Path to Inquiry

While the exact handling of Kamel’s 67-minute visit within the Israeli security apparatus remains unresolved, international officials maintain that the direct intervention by Egypt’s top spy chief should have triggered immediate, high-level defensive preparations. Instead, southern Israeli communities and military bases remained vulnerable when thousands of Hamas combatants breached the border fences on the morning of October 7.