Three years after the Oct. 7 attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is presenting Israel’s response as a story of resilience and overwhelming military success.

Speaking at the United Nations last month , Netanyahu said that, confronted by a “seven-front war,” Israel had, “instead of collapsing,” delivered “crippling blows” to each of its enemies.

“Thanks to the bravery of our fighters, we turned the tables,” the prime minister said at a Monday memorial for the Israelis killed during the October 7 attack and its aftermath. “We have removed from above us a clear and immediate danger of the annihilation of millions of our citizens.”

Netanyahu is on the ballot to extend his unprecedented 19 years in office later this month. But, as he asks Israeli voters to remember his response, his opponents are focused on the role the incumbent prime minister may have played in the lead-up to the attacks.

A series of recent news stories report that the Emirati and Egyptian governments warned Netanyahu of a looming threat from Hamas in advance of the attacks, but that the Prime Minister failed to pass the message on to Israeli security officials.

In September 2023, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Mohamed bin Zayed, the President of the United Arab Emirates, told Netanyahu that Hamas leadership was planning a major military operation.

“Bin Zayed urged Netanyahu to take the situation seriously. To his surprise, however, the prime minister reacted with relative calm,” according to the report. “Netanyahu said that, in his assessment, Hamas intended to operate in the West Bank area, and he reassured bin Zayed that Israel was prepared for any scenario.”

The report, drawn from a book by Haaretz journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, says the attack was, in part, the result of a building frustration within the Palestinian militant group regarding Israel’s slow-walking of talks that would have led to an easing of the blockade of Gaza and the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners.

Shortly before the attacks, Yahya Sinwar, then the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, reportedly told a Fatah official that if Israel did not make progress on the negotiations, he was “preparing a huge surprise for them" and that they should be ready for “expect a 'zilzal,' an earthquake" — a term that people familiar with Sinwar interpreted to mean a war. This threat eventually made its way to the Israeli prime minister.

According to the Haaretz investigation, the Israeli defense establishment knew there was a growing threat from Hamas, but believed it to be smaller in scale. Netanyahu, according to the report, did not share with the security chiefs that he had received additional, more explicit warnings from bin Zayed.

Netanyahu has called the Haaretz report an "absolute lie."

The prime minister’s office told the newspaper that he “didn't speak to the president of the UAE during the period in question and received no warning from him.”

Netanyahu took a trip to Abu Dhabi last month in which, multiple news outlets report, he asked bin Zayed to deny reports of their 2023 phone call. The Emiratis have so far refused to comment on the conversation between the two leaders. Netanyahu’s trip to the UAE was initially a secret, but the Israeli government and the official Emirate news agency eventually confirmed it took place.

Haaretz also reported that the Israeli government turned down diplomatic overtures from Hamas in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, in which the Palestinian group offered to release all hostages below the age of 18 or older than 50, “without anything in return,” except for a guarantee of immediate start of negotiations on other issues.

The unofficial response from the Israelis, according to a Palestinian intermediary, was “Netanyahu doesn't want to talk about anything. He only wants war and the elimination of Hamas,” after which they would free the hostages “by force.”

Moreover, in late September, The Atlantic reported that, in addition to the warning from the UAE (the magazine says it independently confirmed that a call between the two leaders did occur), an Egyptian security official had also told the Israeli government that they risked an attack from Hamas if they did not change course and offer economic concessions to Gaza.

While it is unclear from the reporting whether Abbas Kamel, the Egyptian intelligence director, met with Netanyahu, one former Israeli official told The Atlantic that there was “no world” in which Kamel would travel to Israel to deliver such a message “and Bibi is not aware.” Kamel repeated his warning to Israel shortly thereafter, just days before Oct. 7, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Israeli prime minister’s office has denied these reports.

As the Oct. 27 elections nears, Netanyahu’s political opponents have criticized him for the security lapses three years ago. Gadi Eisenkot, an Israeli general who is seen as the leading contender to unseat Netanyahu, said on X following the Haaretz story that “more and more signs point to the same conclusion: Netanyahu led Israel blindly into the October 7 disaster.” Eisenkot has called for the formation of a commission to investigate the security failures, a move Netanyahu opposes .

Former Prime Ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, who have merged parties for the upcoming elections have also blasted Netanyahu. Bennett said “Netanyahu bears personal and direct responsibility for the failure that led to the deaths of thousands of Israelis on his watch,” Lapid added that if the Prime Minister had done his job “the massacre would have been prevented ,”

The incumbent prime minister had deflected blame for the attacks, saying that the slow response was a failure on the part of security chiefs who had failed to wake him. Had they done so, Netanyahu says “everything would have been different.”

“That’s the story of October 7,” he said.