Under the leadership of Jibril Rajoub—a member of Fatah’s central committee who has personally carried out attacks on Israel—the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) recently petitioned FIFA (the international organization governing soccer) to suspend its Israeli counterpart. The motion failed, but, as Aiden Pink explains, a much larger effort is afoot:

Rajoub’s [FIFA] gambit was another facet of the Palestinian Authority’s escalating efforts to isolate and delegitimize Israel in bodies like the UN Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court—politicizing organizations that could theoretically serve a noble purpose if they weren’t so consumed with anti-Israel animus. . . .

In addition to the PFA, [Rajoub] also heads the Palestinian Olympic Committee, which he has used as a perch to demand Israel’s expulsion from the global sports movement. Unlike most sports administrators, who believe in (or at least talk publicly about) the capacity for sports to unite people of different backgrounds, Rajoub has promoted no such pretense—he has said that Palestinian sports are “one of the methods of resistance” against Israel, and has emphasized that Palestinian youth—over whom he holds a good deal of influence as the PA’s sports czar—have a key role in creating a “permanent state of confrontation.”

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.