On October 12 and 13, the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas attended a Kremlin-sponsored international summit in Kazakhstan, where he met with Vladimir Putin and publicly thanked him for his support, while declaring his own lack of trust in the U.S. Michael Koplow observes that such rhetoric follows a “yearslong pattern . . . where Abbas expects a long list of things from the U.S. without being willing to accede to U.S. requests in return.” Koplow adds:

[Abbas’s] hopes when President Joe Biden was elected were that the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem and the PLO mission in Washington would be immediately reopened, that the Taylor Force Act would be swept away and past U.S. direct support to the Palestinian Authority (PA) would be resumed, and he may have even believed that there was a slight chance that the U.S. would move its embassy back to Tel Aviv. None of these things have occurred, and thus Abbas now speaks about Biden and the current administration as if they have done nothing for the Palestinians and are barely an improvement over the Trump era.

Despite Abbas’s grave disappointment, he blithely glosses over the hundreds of millions of dollars in economic assistance that Biden has restored to the West Bank, the hundreds of millions of dollars once again flowing to UNRWA, [the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees from the Israeli War of Independence and their descendants], and the tens of millions of dollars to civil-society groups working with Palestinians. . . . More importantly, Abbas blithely glosses over the fact that this is about the upper limit of what Biden is able to do under U.S. law and in combination with what current politics in Congress will support.

The reason for that, of course, is that the PA continues to make prisoner and martyr payments in contravention of U.S. law, and despite its own repeated pledges to do so, has not yet taken any significant steps toward reforming this system. The lion’s share of Abbas’s disappointment lies in his own failure to live up to his commitments to the U.S. rather than the other way around.

The idea that Russia is the Palestinians’ great patron while the U.S. sits on its hands flies in the face of all evidence. Nevertheless, Abbas decided to sit down with Putin and thank him for scraps while treating tangible American help as if it does not exist.

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.