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Egyptian intelligence repeatedly told Israel that the situation in Gaza could “explode,” but the warnings were not heeded before Hamas launched a deadly attack on the Jewish state, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
They said the warnings were not hard intelligence about a specific attack. One of the people said Egypt had conveyed concerns “that things could break out due to the political and humanitarian situation in Gaza.” Another called it a “general warning.”
Israel denies receiving specific warnings about Saturday’s attack, which killed at least 1,200 Israelis and sparked a war with Hamas militants carrying out a multi-pronged attack. The Palestinian Authority says more than 1,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Saturday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called reports that he received specific warnings from Egypt before the attack “absolutely false” and “completely fake news.”
Egypt borders Gaza in the North Sinai region, where it has been fighting Islamic State militants for the past decade. Egyptian officials fear the impact of the conflict will spread across the border, particularly by driving Palestinian refugees into the Sinai Peninsula.
Egypt is in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis as the country prepares to re-elect President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in December.
“This is a regional 9/11,” one person familiar with the matter said, comparing it to the 2001 al-Qaeda attack on the United States, adding that the impact on the broader region “could overturn government”.
Egypt has acted as a mediator in ceasefire negotiations in past wars between Hamas and Israel, and has evacuated and treated injured Palestinians. It was the first Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel in 1979 and established intelligence-sharing links with the Jewish state.
It also allows Hamas to have a tightly monitored political office in Cairo, although the Egyptian government remains deeply suspicious of Islamist militants linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
A person familiar with the warning to Israel said the Israeli leadership was likely complacent in its assessment that Hamas, which wrested control of Gaza from rival Fatah in 2007 after Israel withdrew its troops, was primarily interested. is to ensure its control of coastal territories. .
In previous wars with the Jewish state, Israel’s assessment was that Hamas instigated the fighting to extract concessions, whether on the release of prisoners or the easing of the crippling blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt.
Israeli security sources insisted last month that Gaza was relatively stable and that Hamas leaders were not seeking war, instead prioritizing issues of governance and economic development.
Hamas launched an attack in which a team of gunmen massacred men and women in southern Israel and abducted dozens of Israelis, including children. In the weeks leading up to the Hamas attack, Qatar had been brokering talks to increase aid to Gaza and allow more Gaza residents to work in Israel.
However, Hamas was simultaneously planning an attack that threatened to cause unrest in the region. In recent years, several Arab countries have signed normalization agreements with Israel.
While Hamas’s motives are unclear, the attack appears to have been carefully planned to draw Israel into a protracted war, spark another uprising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and potentially attract neighboring countries Aligned armed factions in Lebanon and beyond.
In talks between senior Egyptian and European officials, Cairo expressed “very concern” that the Lebanese militia Hezbollah would be drawn into the fighting, according to people familiar with the talks. It is estimated that Hezbollah has nearly 100,000 missiles in its arsenal.
“Hamas has been pretending for two years that it is rational and not interested in war,” said Ali Baraka, the militant group’s leader. “We let them think that Hamas is busy running Gaza… It has completely given up resistance.”
“Hamas has been secretly preparing this operation,” he told Al-Arabiya television.
Additional reporting by Andrew England in London, Henry Foy in Brussels and Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv
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