For over two decades, the European Union has effectively allowed nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to interfere in the Israel-Palestinian conflict on its behalf. The results, writes Gerald Steinberg, have been very damaging:

In 1995, the European Union’s Barcelona Conference launched the grand-sounding Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, a massive effort encompassing the countries of North Africa, Israel, Syria, and Jordan. The main objective was to establish economic and political frameworks to stabilize the Arab regimes; the second goal was to compete with the U.S. in Arab-Israeli peace making after Oslo.

Both missions failed. But in the process and through a very large budget, the EU built alliances with a number of highly politicized NGOs. . . . [It] began bankrolling dozens of such institutions, including the [far left-wing] Israeli organizations B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and Adalah and the radical Palestinian political NGO Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ), [which receives] close to €1 million annually. This NGO funding was and still is decided in great secrecy and without external oversight. . . .

This outsourcing and mutual dependence is critical to understanding the ways in which EU officials in Brussels promote their objectives, interests, and prejudices regarding the Middle East peace process, which have remained unchanged in the two decades since the Barcelona conference. For officials in [the EU’s foreign-policy wing], these NGOs are the main point of contact with Israeli society. By making connections, writing reports, and providing analyses, NGO officials fill in for missing EU capabilities, while hundreds of NGO employees, in turn, get EU funding. This creates a kind of vicious circle—the EU funds NGOs which confirm EU biases and then get more EU funding.

The process reinforces the biases already held among many EU officials, based on images of Palestinian victimization and overwhelming Israeli power, without countervailing views or more nuanced and complex analyses. . . .

[Furthermore, for] many of [these NGOs], the goal is not merely Israeli withdrawal [from the West Bank] but the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

On Tuesday, a Hizballah drone attack injured three people in northern Israel. The next day, another attack, targeting an IDF base, injured eighteen people, six of them seriously, in Arab al-Amshe, also in the north. This second attack involved the simultaneous use of drones carrying explosives and guided antitank missiles. In both cases, the defensive systems that performed so successfully last weekend failed to stop the drones and missiles. Ron Ben-Yishai has a straightforward explanation as to why: the Lebanon-backed terrorist group is getting better at evading Israel defenses. He explains the three basis systems used to pilot these unmanned aircraft, and their practical effects:

These systems allow drones to act similarly to fighter jets, using “dead zones”—areas not visible to radar or other optical detection—to approach targets. They fly low initially, then ascend just before crashing and detonating on the target. The terrain of southern Lebanon is particularly conducive to such attacks.

But this requires skills that the terror group has honed over months of fighting against Israel. The latest attacks involved a large drone capable of carrying over 50 kg (110 lbs.) of explosives. The terrorists have likely analyzed Israel’s alert and interception systems, recognizing that shooting down their drones requires early detection to allow sufficient time for launching interceptors.

The IDF tries to detect any incoming drones on its radar, as it had done prior to the war. Despite Hizballah’s learning curve, the IDF’s technological edge offers an advantage. However, the military must recognize that any measure it takes is quickly observed and analyzed, and even the most effective defenses can be incomplete. The terrain near the Lebanon-Israel border continues to pose a challenge, necessitating technological solutions and significant financial investment.