# A Former PA Minister Says Sinwar Asked Him to Warn Israel of an Earthquake Before October 7

> Sufian Abu Zaida says he carried a message from the Hamas leader threatening a coming earthquake if negotiations failed, though he has not yet said what the warning actually contained.

- Source: Israel Today
- Canonical URL: https://israeltoday.news/article/abu-zaida-sinwar-earthquake-warning-before-oct-7
- Author: Amir Doron
- Section: Security
- Published: 2026-09-18T14:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-18T14:30:00.000Z
- Tags: Hamas, October 7, Sinwar

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Sufian Abu Zaida, a former Palestinian Authority minister, said in a Facebook video that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar asked him before 7 October to relay a message to Israel warning of an earthquake if negotiations failed. Abu Zaida identified himself as the intermediary who carried the message, but has not yet disclosed what it actually said or to whom in Israel it was delivered.

The claim lines up with reporting from Haaretz journalist Shlomi Eldar, who has described an unnamed source describing the same warning before the attack. Abu Zaida naming himself turns that anonymous account into an on the record one, though it does not yet answer the harder question: whether the warning was specific enough that anyone receiving it could have understood what earthquake meant.

A message delivered and not acted on is a very different story from a message that was too vague to act on, and Abu Zaida's video does not settle which one this was. Coming three years after the attack, from a figure who says he personally carried the warning, the claim adds a name and a channel to a question that has mostly been argued through anonymous sources until now.

The story arrives the same week the IDF is bolstering forces on every front ahead of Yom Kippur, a reminder that the argument over what was known before the last major attack is running alongside preparations against the next one. Abu Zaida has said he intends to reveal more. Until he does, the claim is a name attached to a warning whose contents remain exactly as unverified as they were when the source was anonymous.

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Originally published by Israel Today. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://israeltoday.news/article/abu-zaida-sinwar-earthquake-warning-before-oct-7.