In the West Bank city of Qalqilya, a twenty-foot-tall statue of Saddam Hussein was unveiled last week in the midst of a major thoroughfare. The statue was sponsored by the Arab Liberation Front (ALF), a terrorist group that, like Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, is part of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Stephen Flatow comments:

[T]he Palestinian Authority’s district governor for the Qalqilya District, Rafi Rawajba, attended the unveiling ceremony. Rawajba is a representative of the Fatah movement. . . [And] if the mayor or Abbas didn’t want [the statue] there, it would be gone in five minutes.

In fact, the ALF has erected statues of Saddam in several other Palestinian Authority (PA)-controlled cities, too, and Abbas has not ordered them taken down, either. That’s because he was always one of Saddam’s biggest fans. . . . Just two weeks ago, the official Fatah Facebook page included Saddam alongside photos of other Arab heroes in a collage with the slogan, “From the sea of the blood of the martyrs, we will create the state of Palestine.” On the tenth anniversary of Saddam’s death, last December, the Fatah Facebook page featured a memorial poster hailing Saddam as a “martyr.” There’s even an entire “Martyr Saddam Hussein Square” in Ramallah, the PA’s capital city. . . .

Nearly 300 American soldiers died fighting Saddam in the Gulf War in 1990. Another 4,497 gave their lives fighting Saddam in the Iraq war of 2003 and its aftermath. The creation of statues and public squares in PA territory honoring Saddam is a direct slap in the face to the U.S. and its fallen soldiers.

Abbas and the PA received $357 million from the U.S. last year. Abbas seems to assume that the aid will continue to flow, even if he allows anti-American terrorists such as the ALF to be part of the PLO, and even if statues of America’s enemies, like Saddam Hussein, are erected in PA cities. To judge by the non-reaction of the Trump administration to the newest Saddam statue, it appears that Abbas’s assumption may well be correct.

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.