Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Abu Dhabi on Sunday and sat down face to face with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. That’s according to a senior Israeli official who spoke to Reuters about the visit. So far, nobody on Netanyahu’s side has said a word about it publicly, and the UAE’s foreign ministry has stayed quiet too.
Why This Trip Is Raising Eyebrows
This isn’t happening in a vacuum. Just weeks ago, Haaretz dropped a report claiming Sheikh Mohamed had actually tipped off Netanyahu about ten days before Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, warning him that something big was coming. And here’s the kicker, according to that same report, this warning apparently never got passed along to Israel’s own military or intelligence agencies.
Netanyahu isn’t taking that quietly. He’s called the story false and gone as far as threatening to sue Haaretz over it. But the timing couldn’t be worse for him politically. He’s staring down a brutal reelection fight, and his opponents are already using the alleged missed warning as ammunition, arguing he should be held accountable for the security breakdown that let the attack happen in the first place.
The UAE Isn’t Saying Much
For its part, the UAE hasn’t touched the Haaretz story directly. What it has said is that communication between Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem has stayed steady and open ever since the two countries normalized relations back in 2020. One source who’s familiar with how the UAE operates told Reuters that when it comes to security matters, the country typically works through official channels and government bodies, not through informal chats between national leaders.
This whole situation actually echoes something that happened earlier this year. Back in May, Netanyahu’s office claimed he’d made a secret trip to see Sheikh Mohamed, but the UAE came out and denied any such meeting ever took place. Yet a source close to the matter told Reuters that the two leaders did in fact meet, in Al-Ain, a desert oasis city in Abu Dhabi sitting right along the Omani border, and that the meeting happened on March 26.
