Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a private trip to Abu Dhabi two weeks ago, meeting with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The visit was on Sunday, September 27, and Netanyahu flew on a private plane and spent a couple of hours in the UAE before returning to Israel, the Israeli media reported.
Netanyahu flew to Abu Dhabi at about 2 p.m. on Saturday, Channel 12 reported, as reported by The Times of Israel, and arrived in Abu Dhabi at 3 p.m. He stayed in the UAE for around four hours. The report said the Israeli prime minister met with Sheikh Mohamed but didn't say much about their discussion. And a senior Israeli official said in a report in Reuters that Netanyahu did visit Abu Dhabi and met with the Emirati president.
The meeting came at a politically sensitive time in Israel as speculation grew that the UAE president had warned Netanyahu of a major Hamas operation before the October 7, 2023 attacks. Israeli media recently recalled the alleged warning and how information was delivered and handled. Netanyahu has denied the purported warning, and the UAE has not publicly confirmed the conversation.
The recently reported meeting in Abu Dhabi is of particular interest due to the timing. The visit was taken during the debate over the supposed prior warning on October 7 and was reported to be happening in Israeli political and media circles. The Times of Israel reported that the Emirati president had already established direct communication with Israeli leaders, and UAE relations have been maintained since the start of the Abraham Accords in 2020.
The trip also comes at a time of increasing security cooperation between Israel and the UAE in recent months. The relationship between the two countries has developed much more since the Abraham Accords, and economic, diplomatic and security ties are also blossoming. After the Iran conflict earlier this year, the security environment in the region has changed considerably, and it matters even more for Israel and Gulf states to communicate with each other.
But details of what Netanyahu and Sheikh Mohamed discussed during the latest reported meeting are unclear. No official statement has so far publicly outlined the agenda, agreements or understandings reached during the encounter, but Israeli media reports have described the trip as undisclosed or secret because it was not publicly announced beforehand.
The reported visit is also notable because Netanyahu has already been accused by some of misbehaviour on an alleged secret trip to the UAE. Netanyahu's office claimed that in May 2026 he secretly went to the UAE during the Iran war and met Sheikh Mohamed, claiming that it was a breakthrough in bilateral relations. The UAE denied the visit and said any reports about such visits were untrue.
Unlike the previous investigation, the visit of September 2023 has been reported on by many media outlets such as Reuters, based on an Israeli official's confirmations. At that time, the UAE had not yet commented on the reports. This is important because the information we have is Israeli reporting and an Israeli official's version, and no Emirati official has yet confirmed the visit.
The meeting will continue to be a topic of discussion as more is known about the Israeli and Emirati leaders' conversations. For now, the private visit is another sign of the ongoing diplomatic relationship between Israel and the UAE, but the context of the meeting is being closely watched in what has been called a separate controversy over the alleged warning before the October 7 attacks. Any claims about agreements or specific issues discussed will need to be confirmed by the two governments before they can be accepted as fact.
