Two weeks ago, Ḥagai El-Ad, director of the Israeli human-rights organization B’Tselem, appeared before the UN Security Council to urge it to force Israel out of the West Bank. Emmanuel Navon takes El-Ad to task not only for blaming the Israel-Palestinian conflict on Israel alone but for an utterly misplaced faith in the UN:

El-Ad claimed that Israel was “established through international legitimacy granted through a historic decision” by the UN in 1947. This is inaccurate. The UN General Assembly vote on November 29, 1947 was a declaratory recommendation, not a binding decision. That recommendation became moot the moment it was rejected by the Arab League. The vote . . . did not establish the state of Israel. Had the Jews not rebuilt their land for the decades preceding the vote, and did they not win the war imposed on them by six Arab armies in 1948, the state of Israel would not have been established.

What El-Ad was telling the UN, in substance, was this: you gave birth to this child, now tell him to behave. Besides being factually wrong, this statement ignores the fact that the UN of 1947 is not the UN of 2016. In 1947, the UN was composed mostly of free nations that had fought together to defeat Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. Today, the UN is an organization where Muslim states and autocracies have a numerical majority at the General Assembly, at UN agencies, and at the Human Rights Council. . . . It is the UN that has looked the other way for five years as some half-million people have been killed in Syria. . . .

That Ḥagai El-Ad would rely on such an organization to solve the intricate Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to uphold human rights is naïve at best and malicious at worse.

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.