With Israelis going to the polls next week, Haviv Rettig Gur comments on the predicament party leaders now find themselves in:

If Prime Minister Netanyahu manages to eke out a slim majority, it will likely be so slim that he will find himself forced to cater to the whims of the most right-wing lawmakers on the ballot. Netanyahu’s opponents, meanwhile, theoretically led by Yair Lapid of [the secular, center-left] Yesh Atid, may well be too divided and diverse to produce a manageable coalition.

Many . . . factions are trying to take advantage of the standoff in the hope of playing kingmaker after election day. The Islamist party Ra’am, for example, has detached from the Arab-majority Joint List to mount its own run, promising to deal with anyone who wins the election, even the disliked Netanyahu, in order to deliver budgets and government attention to its marginalized Bedouin and Arab constituents.

This competition at the margins has caused mudslinging between parties who are by no means competing for the same voters: the ḥaredi United Torah Judaism, led by Moshe Gafni, and the right-wing and anti-ḥaredi Yisrael Beytenu, led by Avigdor Lieberman. Each has found in the other the perfect enemy with which to rally voters:

Lieberman and . . . Gafni face the same problem. Their respective parties and broader political camps seem close to victory; nevertheless, they have each remained maddeningly far from it for two long years. Each is threatened from within his own camp—Lieberman, from secularist challengers like Yesh Atid and others, UTJ by frustrated ḥaredi voters streaming toward the religious Zionist parties. Each badly needed a nemesis, a threat to his respective constituents’ way of life, to rally the ranks and draw the apathetic out to the polls.

Over the past few days, with . . . accusations of “anti-Semitism” and “fundamentalism,” they have found in each other the answer to their troubles.

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.