Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, visited the United Arab Emirates over the weekend to meet with the Emirati president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the two leaders’ offices confirmed Monday.

The official statements came after a flurry of recent reports that Netanyahu had been warned, including by the Emirati leader, about Hamas’ plans to attack Israel before Oct. 7, 2023. The reports have put the prime minister on the defensive as he seeks reelection in a vote to be held next month and have placed the spotlight on Mohamed.

The meeting, which took place Sunday, covered “bilateral relations between the UAE and Israel and ways to strengthen and develop them,” according to Mohamed’s office. Netanyahu’s office said that he had visited “at the invitation” of the Emirati leader and that their discussions had “focused on strengthening relations between the two countries and on regional challenges.”

Israel and the UAE agreed to normalize relations in 2020 under the Abraham Accords, which strengthened economic, political and security relations between the two nations.

The question of who bears responsibility for failing to prevent the Hamas-led attack in Israel is a major issue in the upcoming elections. Netanyahu, who is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, has blamed national security officials for failing to stop the attack.

His critics and rivals have long pointed to his failures for the deadly raid, a stance recently bolstered by reports that he had received multiple warnings of a significant incursion in the works.

This month, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Mohamed had warned Netanyahu about a planned Hamas attack before the 2023 onslaught that ignited the war in the Gaza Strip. Two people familiar with the matter later confirmed the warning to The New York Times.

But it never reached the leaders of Israel’s security establishment, according to five former senior Israeli officials. When Netanyahu gathered his security chiefs days later, on Oct. 1, 2023, for a meeting about the situation in Gaza, he never mentioned it, according to minutes of the meeting reviewed by the Times, and instead urged calm in the enclave to avoid sabotaging normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia in a deal he thought was imminent.

On Saturday, The Atlantic reported that Egypt’s intelligence chief had visited Israel weeks before the war with Hamas, delivering a dire message about the Palestinian militant group’s plans.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Egyptian officials had warned Israel of a looming Hamas attack and that Abbas Kamel, Egypt’s intelligence chief at the time, had called Netanyahu to deliver another warning after visiting Israel in late September 2023.

Netanyahu, in a post on social media Monday, denied meeting with or speaking to Kamel and rejected the idea he had received any warning through Israeli intelligence officials from Egypt.

Netanyahu accused the left-wing news media of “running a vile and false campaign” aimed at pinning on him the failures of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, and its chief at the time, Ronen Bar.

He also reiterated his position that Israeli security and military chiefs had kept him out of the loop in the early hours of the attack and had mishandled matters.

In an appeal to voters, Netanyahu in his post blamed “foreign and hostile states and actors, including Arab countries,” of seeking to topple his right-wing coalition and replace it with a “left-wing-Arab parties government” that would withdraw from Israeli-occupied territories and establish a Palestinian state.

On Monday, in a separate statement, Netanyahu’s office described as “fake news” a report by The Associated Press that during the weekend visit to the UAE, he asked Mohamed to deny that he had been warned about Oct. 7.

The Emirati government did not immediately address the AP report.

Netanyahu’s office on Monday also said that the Shin Bet had filed a complaint with the chief military censor about Israeli TV broadcaster Channel 12, which initially reported the visit to the UAE.

The complaint said it had endangered the prime minister and his delegation by publicizing the visit while they were still traveling and outside Israel.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Ephrat Livni/Dave Sanders
c. 2026 The New York Times Company