When Mahmoud Abbas visited the White House last week, President Trump reportedly requested that he put an end to the policy of paying generous salaries to Palestinians held in Israeli jails for acts of terror. Shortly thereafter, one of Abbas’s top advisers commented that ceasing these payments would be “insane.” All the more reason for Congress to pass the Taylor Force Act, which would withhold funding from the Palestinian Authority until it stops using its money to reward the murder of Israelis. Douglas Feith and Sander Gerber write:

Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA) colleagues are bound and determined to perpetuate the conflict with Israel. Their personal interests require it. If the conflict ended, they would lose foreign aid, which makes their lucrative corruption possible. They would stop receiving invitations to the White House and other gratifying diplomatic attention. They would cease to be the leaders of a long-standing and proudly uncompromising national struggle, forfeiting their self-respect and prestige especially in the Arab and Muslim worlds. For them, peace would be hell.

Peace could enormously benefit the Palestinian people, however. It could open a path to greater freedom and prosperity for them and save their children from the fatal lure of “martyrdom.” Those interests, alas, don’t influence PA policy. . . . [But] that’s the context in which Congress should consider the Taylor Force Act.

Of all that’s wrong with the way the PA operates, nothing is more harmful than the elaborate apparatus it has created to push its people to become terrorists. . . . The PA has created two (two!) ministries specifically for this purpose, with combined budgets exceeding $330 million in 2016. . . . The size of the payments correlates to the number of their victims and the severity of the harm inflicted on them. The payments dwarf the average monthly salaries of ordinary working inhabitants of the West Bank. It’s sick, and it’s expensive. And it’s facilitated by U.S. aid dollars even though some of the victims of this terrorism are, like Taylor Force, U.S. citizens.

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.