Reports that Egypt warned of an impending escalation in Gaza before the Oct. 7 massacre have caused an uproar in Israel in recent days. But who is former Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, the man at the center of the reports?
Kamel served as chief of staff to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi when Sisi was supreme commander of Egypt's armed forces. Sisi, who was appointed defense minister during the Muslim Brotherhood's rule, led the 2013 military coup that ousted the Islamist movement from power. After Sisi formally became president in 2014, Kamel was once again appointed to run his office. In practice, he was one of Sisi's closest confidants.
Against that backdrop, Kamel was appointed head of Egypt's General Intelligence Service in the summer of 2018. It is one of the most sensitive positions in Egypt, dealing with regional security matters. In the years before the Oct. 7 massacre, Kamel led Egypt's mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and met several times with Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar.
Kamel's appointment as intelligence chief was far from an obvious choice. He had, after all, been an officer in the Egyptian army's armored corps and had undergone courses and training in Western countries. His intelligence experience consisted primarily of serving as assistant Egyptian defense attaché in the Czech Republic and holding positions in the military attachés division of Egyptian military intelligence, which he eventually headed.
In other words, he had not served in a more senior position within the General Intelligence Service, such as deputy director, before being parachuted in to lead the organization. His appointment was driven primarily by the relationship of trust he had built with Sisi.
In October 2024, about a year into the Gaza war, Kamel was replaced after six years in the post. Hassan Mahmoud Rashad, a senior career officer from the General Intelligence Service, succeeded him. Kamel was appointed a presidential adviser and special envoy.
3 warnings from Cairo
The Atlantic reported Saturday that on Sept. 26, 2023, Kamel visited Israel and warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Gaza was on the verge of an explosion. According to Israeli, US, Arab and European officials, Kamel warned that the Hamas appeared to be preparing for a large-scale attack.
According to the investigation, those officials were briefed on Kamel's visit after the Oct. 7 massacre. An Israeli official told The Atlantic that Kamel advised Netanyahu to offer Hamas economic concessions in an effort to avert a confrontation. According to the official, the message from the Egyptian intelligence chief at the time was: "If you don't change direction, Gaza will blow up in your face."
The report stressed, however, that "Kamel did not provide Israeli officials with a date or specific information about what would turn out to be a multipronged attack on Israel less than two weeks later, on October 7." It also said it remained unclear exactly whom he met.
According to The Atlantic, Kamel's Egyptian aircraft remained in Israel for 67 minutes, according to airport logs, before taking off for Cairo. Flight-tracking applications corroborated the aircraft's route. The report also said an open question remained over what Israeli officials did with the Egyptian warning. Officials from seven different countries told the magazine that Kamel's visit should have set off alarm bells at the highest levels of the Israeli government.
The Atlantic also reported that, according to Netanyahu's public schedule, the prime minister attended a "classified briefing" following a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War on Sept. 26. Shortly afterward, he approved several economic concessions for Hamas.
The officials said the very presence of Egypt's intelligence chief in Israel should have underscored the urgency of the situation."The messenger was the message," a former senior Israeli official said. "There is no world in which senior Israeli officials meet with the Egyptian intelligence chief and Bibi doesn't know about it."
In the days after the outbreak of the war, the Prime Minister's Office denied receiving any direct or indirect warnings from Egypt about the situation in Gaza. Spokespeople for Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi did not respond to The Atlantic's requests for comment. Tzachi Hanegbi, who was Israel's national security adviser at the time, denied to the magazine that Kamel had made such a visit or that Egypt had issued any such warning.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Kamel also called Netanyahu in early October 2023, just days before the attack, to deliver a third warning about indications of an impending assault from Gaza. The newspaper, citing officials in an Arab government, reported that Kamel had "grown increasingly alarmed" because two previous Egyptian warnings, in June and September, had gone unheeded in Israel.
According to one of the officials, the Egyptians continued issuing warnings until 48 hours before the attack, although the alerts did not specify its timing or scale. Netanyahu's office did not respond to the newspaper's questions and has previously denied that any conversations between the prime minister and Kamel took place in the months preceding Oct. 7.
