‘A Complete Lie’: Netanyahu Denies Report of Egyptian Warning Before Stunning Hamas Attack

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied reports that Egypt had warned that Hamas militants were planning an attack, according to a report.

“Israeli Prime Minister's office says reports about a warning that was passed from Egypt ahead of the Gaza war are false,” Axios correspondent Barak Ravid said on X, the former Twitter. 

Netanyahu's office called the report "a complete lie," Ravid said.

"No preliminary message came from Egypt and the prime minister has not spoken or met with the Egyptian intelligence chief" since forming a new government in December 2022, "neither indirectly nor directly," Ravid quoted Netanyahu's representative as saying. "This is complete fake news."

On Monday, the Associated Press quoted an unnamed Egyptian official saying that Cario had repeatedly warned Israel that Hamas was working toward “something big,” but that Israel’s security forces were preoccupied with growing violence on the West Bank. 

"We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big,” the official, whose name was not disclosed, told AP.

“But they underestimated such warnings."

On Saturday morning, 1,000 Hamas fighters attacked Israel by land, sea, and air in a stunning raid that left 800 Israelis—most of them civilians—dead, and another 130 taken as hostages into Gaza. Some 500 Palestinians have been killed in ongoing reprisal bombings. 

Ravid’s post was the first sign of an official Israeli comment on the Egyptian claims. 

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, Israel’s chief military spokesman, told reporters the army would get to the bottom of its failures. "First, we fight, then we investigate," he said.