Egypt warned Israel of Hamas invasion weeks before Oct 7

According to accounts cited in the review, an Egyptian delegation met Israeli diplomatic officials in late September 2023 and warned that tensions in Gaza and Judea and Samaria were approaching a critical threshold.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Egypt relayed warnings to Israel in the weeks preceding the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led assault, cautioning that conditions in Gaza were deteriorating rapidly and risked erupting into major violence, according to a detailed review published Monday by Israel Hayom.

The report, citing senior Israeli and Egyptian officials who spoke anonymously due to the sensitivity of the matter, describes repeated messages delivered through diplomatic and security channels in the two weeks before the attack.

Egyptian officials reportedly alerted Israel’s Foreign Ministry and National Security Council that the situation in Gaza was “explosive” and becoming increasingly difficult to contain.

According to accounts cited in the review, an Egyptian delegation met with Israeli diplomatic officials in late September 2023 and warned that tensions in Gaza and the West Bank were approaching a critical threshold.

Egyptian interlocutors stressed that continued reliance on containment measures could fail if underlying pressures were not addressed.

Israeli officials familiar with the contacts confirmed that Egypt conveyed concerns about instability, though there were differing views over the precision of the warnings and how they were assessed by Israel’s political leadership.

The review also points to an unusual incident on Sept. 26, when an aircraft linked to Egyptian intelligence briefly landed in a restricted section of Ben Gurion Airport before returning to Cairo.

Officials with knowledge of special operations protocols told the paper that such short landings are generally associated with urgent, high-level consultations.

Around the same time, Israel’s National Security Council head, who is responsible for maintaining continuous contact with Egyptian intelligence, did not attend a state ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. The council declined to comment on the circumstances. Multiple Israeli sources cited by Israel Hayom said Egypt had conveyed a focused warning of a major impending incident, which under standard procedures should have been elevated to the prime minister’s office.

Despite these alerts, Israel’s leadership continued to publicly project that the situation was manageable. Attention at the time was heavily directed toward domestic political turmoil, including mass protests over judicial reform, while policy toward Gaza emphasized economic arrangements and deterrence aimed at containing Hamas.

On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border defenses, killing about 1,200 people and abducting roughly 250 hostages, in the deadliest attack in Israel’s history and the trigger for the ongoing war in Gaza.

In response to the report, Israel’s Foreign Ministry denied that such warning meetings occurred, rejecting the claims as false. The National Security Council said it had no record of receiving a concrete warning from Egypt about an imminent attack and denied knowledge of an Egyptian intelligence aircraft landing in Israel on the cited date.

The competing versions have intensified scrutiny over how prewar signals were handled and whether a broader pattern of misjudgment, rather than a single intelligence failure, left Israel unprepared. Investigations into the lead-up to Oct. 7 remain ongoing, with growing calls for a comprehensive inquiry into political, military, and intelligence decision-making before the attack.