On September 25, 1973, Jordan’s King Hussein flew to Israel and told Prime Minister Golda Meir that the Syrian army stood ready for war. Her generals discounted him. Eleven days later, Egypt and Syria attacked on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s most solemn day. Meir survived the war but not its verdict.
Today, Israelis measure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against two predecessors. One camp saw Meir, the leader who heard a warning and failed to act. The other saw Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who turned danger into the peace treaty with Egypt and the destruction of Iraq’s Osirak reactor. Netanyahu’s trip to Abu Dhabi on September 27, 2026, showed which legacy he chases.
The first camp had a phone call on its side. On September 8, 2026, Haaretz reported that Mohamed bin Zayed, president of the United Arab Emirates, warned Netanyahu about ten days before October 7, 2023, that the rulers of Gaza were preparing a major attack. The New York Times then reported that the warning never reached Israel’s security chiefs and that, on October 1, 2023, Netanyahu opposed striking commanders in Gaza for fear of harming normalization with Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu denied receiving any warning.
The second camp finds its evidence in Abu Dhabi. Mossad director Roman Gofman and National Security Adviser Shmuel Ben Ezra accompanied Netanyahu on the six-hour visit. The next day, the Emirati state news agency confirmed the meeting. The confirmation was important. In May 2026, Netanyahu’s office announced a secret wartime visit to the Emirates, and Abu Dhabi dismissed the claim.
The guest list explains the change. Yedioth Ahronoth’s sources placed representatives of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar and eastern Libya at the table, and two Persian Gulf diplomats told Israel Hayom that at least two states without relations with Israel sent delegates. None of those governments acknowledged attending. According to those reports, Gofman arranged the gathering after Riyadh asked Israel for help against Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Yoni Ben Menachem, an Israeli analyst of Arab affairs, adds that the Saudis asked for intelligence, early warning and air defense, and that Netanyahu did not refuse.
Normalization once meant flights, embassies and photographs. Early warning means shared radar data. Air defense means linked batteries and common rules on who fires at what. Neither stays secret for long. Once Saudi radars feed Israeli launchers, Riyadh has taken a side in the war between Jerusalem and Tehran, whatever its diplomats say. The Houthis, Tehran’s most independent ally, pushed Saudi Arabia toward an operational alliance that years of talks failed to produce.
Here the Begin comparison exposes a gap. Begin struck the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak on June 7, 1981, three weeks before an election, and won the vote. He acted alone. The Reagan administration suspended delivery of F-16 fighters and voted at the United Nations Security Council to condemn the raid. Begin could absorb Washington’s anger because he had asked no Arab government for anything. Netanyahu has asked several, and they will bear Iranian retaliation first, as Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates learned in 2026. They came to Abu Dhabi because American forces stand behind them.
A Begin strategy, therefore, requires three decisions from Washington before the next round. First, the Pentagon should turn the Abu Dhabi channel into a standing structure inside Central Command, which added Israel in 2021 to put Israeli and Arab militaries under one planning roof. Second, Washington should offer Riyadh a guarantee beyond the defense agreement the two governments signed in November 2025, so that Saudi Arabia never has to weigh Israeli radars against accommodating Iran. Third, the administration must name its aim. The Pentagon extended deployments of some 50,000 troops into 2027 while President Donald Trump weighed declaring the war over. Arab rulers will not stand beside Israel if they suspect Washington will declare victory and leave at Tehran’s mercy.
Meir heard her warning from an Arab king and let her generals overrule it. Netanyahu, whatever became of his own warning, invited the Arab rulers who once warned Israel to defend the skies beside it. The test will come over the Arabian Peninsula, on the night a Houthi missile heads for Riyadh and an Israeli radar sees it first.
