Most of the article spends its time on the results. For people looking for the actual answer to the headline question:
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Until last year, the US government restricted the quality of satellite images that American companies were permitted to provide on a commercial basis.
The Kyl-Bingaman Amendment (KBA) had been introduced in 1997 to address Israeli security concerns.
Although the ruling only referred to Israel, it was also applied the restriction to images of the Palestinian territories.
The KBA limited image quality so that an object the size of a car was just about visible as a highly blurred image, but anything smaller would be very difficult to identify.
"We [Israel] would always prefer to be photographed at the lowest resolution possible", said Amnon Harari, head of space programmes at Israel's Defence Ministry last year, reported by Reuters.
"It's always preferable to be seen blurred, rather than precisely."
It's not uncommon that sites such as military bases have been blurred - but the KBA was the only case of such a wide area being subject to such a restriction.
However, once non-US providers, such as French company Airbus, were able to supply these images at a higher resolution, the US came under increasing pressure to end its restrictions.
In July 2020, the KBA was dropped, and now the US government allows American companies to provide far higher-quality images of the region (so that objects the size of a person can be readily picked out).
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i.e. it's only been legal for US companies to take higher-resolution imagery for under a year, and Israel is certainly not going to allow the aerial photography that gets really high-resolution imagery in developed countries. Presumably over the next few years there will be enough overflights by high-resolution satellites, and companies like Planet Labs will no longer be charging their new-imagery premiums.