On Thursday night, the Trump administration announced that, while it does not believe “the existence of [Israeli] settlements [in the West Bank] is an impediment to peace,” it does believe “the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.” The American press by and large interpreted the statement as an endorsement of the previous administration’s attitude, with the New York Times running a report under the headline “Trump Embraces Pillars of Obama’s Foreign Policy.” However, writes John Podhoretz, the opposite is true:

What [the recent White House statement] does, in effect, is return the United States to the . . . policy outlined in a letter sent from George W. Bush to Ariel Sharon in 2004. In that letter, Bush [accepted] the reality that the most populous Israeli settlements beyond the pre-1967 borders would certainly remain in Israeli hands at the end of any successful peace negotiation with the Palestinians. And according to the officials who negotiated the matter, . . . it was understood that the expansion of existing population centers due to natural growth (families getting larger, people moving in) should not be considered a violation of the idea that there should be no new settlements. For if, like New York City, [the town of] Ariel gets more populous, its land mass does not increase in size, just the number of people living there.

The Obama administration did not like these ideas, and reversed them. Its conception of a “settlement freeze” was that it be a freeze on the number of settlers as well as the number of settlements. Add new apartments to Ariel, and you were “expanding the settlements.”

The Trump language puts an end to that idea. It says “the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful.” This returns U.S. policy to the notion that the physical acreage holding settlers should not increase but that the number of settlers is not at issue. This is a wholesale shift in America’s approach.

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.