Perhaps the most surprising and welcome development in Israeli politics this year is the conservative Islamic party Ra’am’s declaration that it would sit in a governing coalition, either with Likud or with Likud’s opponents—something no Arab party has ever done in Israel’s history. Dan Diker and Khaled Abu Toameh argue that this move is not a fleeting bit of political opportunism, but the culmination of a years-long effort by the party’s leader—the dentist-turned-parliamentarian Mansour Abbas—to change the nature of Arab politics in the Jewish state:

Abbas’s campaign [in the last election] avoided incendiary default statements on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that had characterized the Israeli Arab political leadership’s rhetoric for decades, including the recent April 2021 swearing-in of Knesset members. Instead of pledging allegiance to Israel, MKs from the Arab Joint List, [from which Ra’am recently broke off], used the platform to condemn Israel as an “apartheid, racist, occupation state.”

Abbas’s successful campaign responded to growing frustration in the Israeli Arab community. Since 2007, the Israeli Arab middle class has grown significantly. Israel’s nearly two million Arab citizens have increasingly sought economic and political integration, with 63 percent of Israeli Arabs supporting Arab parties joining an Israeli coalition government. . . . Ra’am succeeded in attracting a wide electoral base, including young people, Christians, secular Muslims, and Bedouin.

Notably, the nationalist Likud faction won more votes in the Arab sector in the 2021 elections than the left-wing Meretz and Labor factions combined. . . . Two polls in early 2020 indicated a growing Israeli-Arab identity as opposed to a Palestinian-Arab identity that had more commonly characterized Arab citizens of Israel. In parallel, the 2020 coronavirus pandemic emphasized the equality between Jews and non-Jewish citizens [and] a sense of unity during a national crisis.

All this, note Diker and Abu Toameh, is taking place during Jerusalem’s normalization with several Arab states, leading to a slow disintegration in the Arab world of the taboo against open cooperation with Israel. And that, in turn, could have an effect on the Palestinians:

The Palestinian Authority’s anti-Israel policies, particularly its boycott of the $50 billion investment program as part of the Abraham Accords 2019 economic workshop in Manama, Bahrain, contrasted sharply with Arab normalization with Israel and growing Israeli Arab normalization within Israeli politics. . . . The Palestinian Authority’s arrest, detention, and mistreatment of Palestinian participants at Bahrain’s 2019 “Peace to Prosperity” workshop prompted defiant responses by some in the Palestinian private sector.

While largely unnoticed in Western policy circles, Palestinian-Israeli normalization and economic cooperation have [also] taken root. Since 2005, normalization between Palestinians and Israelis in Area C of the West Bank has flourished in fifteen industrial and commercial zones, providing a career path to some 40,000 West Bank Palestinians who work together with Israelis under identical conditions and receive the benefits and protections of Israeli labor and social-security laws.

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.