The Supreme Court has the power to rule on matters pertaining to pornography and obscenity because that's not protected speech either. Their resolution to the obscenity cases was to implement a non-ban ban on such material, relegating decisions pertaining to what's obscene to "community standards".
Characterizing satellite photography as protected political speech sounds like a stretch to me. I'd be surprised if it passed judicial muster. If it's political speech, what's the political position? That Israel or the Palestinians are bad? That their borders as drawn are right or wrong?
It may be that you have your starting point wrong. As I understand it, all speech is protected, except for "certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech." Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire. Obscenity is one such class; speech creating a clear and present danger is another.
The point is, speech is presumed protected. By what virtue would high resolution pictures of Israel not be protected free speech? It's not libelous, obscene, seditious, or any other exception I can think of.
Characterizing satellite photography as protected political speech sounds like a stretch to me. I'd be surprised if it passed judicial muster. If it's political speech, what's the political position? That Israel or the Palestinians are bad? That their borders as drawn are right or wrong?