Since 2006, Jibril Rajoub, a former Arafat henchman, has served as the head of the Palestinian Football Association; he is also the chairman of the Palestinian Olympic Committee. Rajoub, who aspires to succeed Mahmoud Abbas as chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA), has consistently used his position to conduct diplomatic warfare against Israel by athletic means. But David May argues that his ability to do so may be waning:

Until this summer, Rajoub’s strategy had been a successful one. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and other countries have discriminated against Israeli athletes—earning them warnings and fines from international sports bodies since at least 2009. From at least 2013 through late 2017, Rajoub oversaw an abortive campaign to boot Israel from FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, for alleged human-rights violations. Rajoub’s efforts succeeded in creating the FIFA Monitoring Committee for Israel-Palestine. However, the committee’s report in October 2017, showed how weak Rajoub’s claims were against Israel, leading FIFA to dismiss his efforts.

But the bottom truly fell out when Israel prepared to host the Argentinian national team in the summer of 2018, and Rajoub vowed “to target [the Argentinian player Lionel] Messi personally” to pressure the team into canceling the match. Protesters waved Messi shirts stained with fake blood outside Argentina’s training facility and burned pictures and jerseys of the Argentinian soccer phenomenon. In response, FIFA handed Rajoub a $20,000 fine and a one-year suspension. Argentina withdrew from the match—not because it respected the Palestinian boycott call, but because it feared for its players’ safety.

Arab-Israeli normalization deals, now including the UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan, are making this kind of rejectionism seem more out of touch with reality every day—even with the Palestinians themselves.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.