Thinking beyond Netanyahu – POLITICO

US, EU LEADERS HEDGE BETS ON BIBI       

ON THE GROUND IN GAZA: Israel’s military said overnight that it had surrounded Gaza City. “We’re at the height of the battle,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “We are advancing.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to visit Israel today to meet Netanyahu, as Washington seeks to press the prime minister to agree to “pauses” in fighting. “What we’re trying to do is explore the idea of as many pauses as might be necessary to continue to get aid out and to continue to work to get people out safely, including hostages,” U.S. national security spokesperson John Kirby said. Reuters has more.

BIDEN, MACRON CULTIVATE TIES IN ISRAELI OPPOSITION: Against that backdrop, leaders on both sides of the Atlantic are discussing a future in which Netanyahu is no longer in power, and some top figures are building ties with those in the Israeli opposition in anticipation.

Betting on the future: In this story by my colleagues Jonathan Lemire, Nahal Toosi and Alexander Ward, U.S. officials confirm that President Joe Biden has discussed Netanyahu’s political difficulties, including since he came back from a trip to Israel. Biden has gone so far as to suggest to Netanyahu himself that he should think about lessons he would share with his eventual successor, two administration officials said.

More of a Lapid guy: On the European side, French President Emmanuel Macron met with opposition leader Yair Lapid, as well as with Benny Gantz (who has joined a unity government with Netanyahu), during his own recent trip to Israel. According to Benjamin Haddad, a lawmaker with Macron’s Renaissance party in France, “support for [Israel’s] right to defend itself does not mean support for Netanyahu’s government and even less for his most recent coalition.”

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Haddad went on: “Today, the Israelis are at war, but there will be a time when responsibility for the attack will be debated. Israelis will not be able to escape a form of commission of inquiry into individual responsibilities — including at the political level.”

Not just France: Haddad was quick to add that Israelis are in control of politics in their country, and that Hamas’ attack targeted Israel per se, not its prime minister. But his comments chime with what Playbook and my colleague Barbara Moens picked up in conversations with European diplomats on the sidelines of an EU leaders’ gathering in Brussels last week.

Bibi in the background: While Netanyahu wasn’t the focus of leaders’ talks, his bad poll numbers and the sense that he will at some point pay a political price for Israel’s security failings on October 7 were definitely the subtext.

Miracle: “Everyone realizes that after what happened it’s a miracle that he’s [Netanyahu] still in his seat,” said one diplomat who was granted anonymity to discuss the confidential exchanges. The diplomat added that while the war may shore up Netanyahu in the short term, that may also encourage him to escalate and prolong the fighting.

Countdown begins: Speaking to my colleague Nahal, a former U.S. Middle East negotiator, Aaron David Miller, pointed out that the average lifespan of an Israeli government is 1.8 years. “At the end of December the Netanyahu government will be at its one-year mark. It’s hard for me to believe that he’ll still be the prime minister next year at this time,” he said.

Hold on a sec: Some U.S. officials pushed back on the idea they are thinking beyond Netanyahu, emphasizing the Biden administration’s support for Israel. EU capitals contacted for comment by Playbook declined to comment on the internal politics of another country.

Our people: But when speaking privately, EU diplomats are quick to point out that their leadership is in touch with Israeli opposition figures who, in many cases, are much closer politically to their EU peers than Netanyahu, who backed the reelection of ex-U.S. President Donald Trump and has largely turned his back on the two-state solution enshrined for years in EU position papers on the Middle East. Macron, meanwhile, has warm relations with Lapid, a former journalist and, like the French president, a centrist, per Haddad.

Doing himself no favors: It doesn’t help Netanyahu’s standing in the West that the Israeli government isn’t cracking down on settler violence in the West Bank, that policy papers recommend displacing all Gaza residents into Egypt, or that some of his ministers are making inflammatory statements about Gaza’s civilians on social media.

Shortening runway: Chatter about a post-Netanyahu Israel in Western power circles is just that, for now — chatter. But frustration with the prime minister feeds into the overall mood music around the war and, ultimately, how long the West will continue backing Israel’s offensive.

ALSO WORRYING EUROPE: The threat of a jump in extremist activity on the Continent as a reaction to the current Middle East crisis. Jamie Dettmer reports that counterterrorism bosses are ramping up surveillance to try to prevent a possible wave of attacks.

BAERBOCK URGES RADICAL EU OVERHAUL       

GERMANY WILLING TO GIVE UP COMMISSIONER, SAYS FOREIGN MINISTER: No commissioner for you! That’s the message from German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who wants to stop the practice of having one commissioner per country at the EU’s executive arm to combat administrative bloating, as the bloc considers expanding beyond its 27 members, Suzanne Lynch reports from Berlin.

Selfless: “The European Parliament and the Commission cannot be simply allowed to grow and grow, become ever bigger,” Baerbock told an audience that included journalists, as well as the Ukrainian and Turkish foreign ministers, Dmytro Kuleba and Hakan Fidan. “We need to take brave, courageous decisions. A country like Germany, for example — we are ready to do without our own commissioner for a limited period of time,” Baerbock declared.

Be brave, be bold: Baerbock also took aim at shibboleths of EU policymaking, such as the idea that all members must agree unanimously on any decision having to do with taxation or foreign policy — a recipe that has led to relative paralysis on both fronts.

Wait for it: The comments, made at the German foreign ministry, lay out Berlin’s stall ahead of the unveiling of the Commission’s progress reports on candidate countries, due out next week. The points aren’t all new. Baerbock backed calls for an incremental approach to enlargement that was previously described in a Franco-German position paper. But the speech shows that as far as Berlin is concerned, expansion and reform are very much part of the same package.

Watch for Dublin: Smaller EU countries may chafe at seeing their power further diluted in a bigger bloc. Remember, Irish voters rejected the Lisbon Treaty the first time around back in 2008, mainly because it originally proposed cutting the number of commissioners. The Commission quickly reversed course and put forward a revised proposal.

The solution: This time EU officials hope the wide-ranging changes they are envisioning can be achieved within the framework of the existing treaties — so no bothersome referendums to deal with. But there will be a battle over which areas should be covered by the qualified-majority voting system.

Geopolitical EU: Baerbock called for aspiring countries to be allowed to attend certain EU Council meetings, and for students from countries like North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey to be admitted to the Erasmus student program, in order to keep the EU dream alive, particularly among youth. 

Rap on the knuckles: Baerbock also called for improved coordination between the EU’s foreign policy wing, the European External Action Service, and the Commission — calling out a relationship that has long been troubled. (It hasn’t been helped by the frostiness between Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and EU High Representative Josep Borrell.) The EU has more than 140 delegations worldwide, Baerbock noted, asking: “Do we exploit this potential?”

NORTH KOREA BEATS EUROPE       

NORTH KOREA HITS EU MILLION MISSILE TARGET FIRST: Remember back in March, when the EU vowed it would soon be able to produce 1 million shells for Ukraine annually? Well, it’s not quite a year on but the EU is lagging behind on its goal — while North Korea has just delivered a batch of 1 million shells to Russia’s armed forces, report Joshua Posaner, Veronika Melkozerova, Laura Kayali, Jacopo Barigazzi and Caleb Larson in today’s must-read.

Embarrassing: Only around 300,000 of the EU’s promised shells have so far been delivered to Ukraine, and with silos in Europe running low, the bloc’s defense industry isn’t boosting capacity quickly enough to get anywhere near the target. Meanwhile, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers at a closed-door parliamentary audit on Wednesday that North Korea had made at least 10 arms transfers to Russia since August, sending Putin a million shells for his war machine.

French focus: To put it in context, last month, France’s Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the country’s industry would be able to send some 3,000 rounds of critical 155 millimeter ammunition to Kyiv each month from next year. Which would amount to only 36,000 rounds a year from Europe’s defense industry leader. Read the full story here.

**Hear Georges Gilkinet, Belgium vice-prime minister and minister for transport and mobility open the Mobility stream of our Sustainable Future Week on November 14. Apply to attend onsite here**

MORE WAR FALLOUT       

UKRAINE LISTS NESTLÉ AS WAR SPONSOR: Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention added Nestlé to its list of “international sponsors of war,” it announced on Thursday, because the company continues to sell its goods in Russia and pay taxes there. Nestlé previously said it had “drastically reduced its portfolio in Russia.” Other companies on the list — which has no legal consequences but is symbolic — include Mondelez International, Unilever and PepsiCo.

DON’T ABANDON US, KYIV PLEADS: Senior Ukrainian politicians appealed to the EU to not abandon Kyiv after Italian PM Giorgia Meloni unintentionally disclosed during a call with Russian pranksters that European leaders were growing weary of the war. Veronika and Hannah Roberts have more.

RUSSIAN BEHIND ANTISEMITIC GRAFFITI IN PARIS? Two Moldovan nationals were arrested in Paris after admitting they painted Stars of David on a wall on the orders of an unidentified individual, the Paris prosecutor’s office told POLITICO’s Pierre Emmanuel Ngendakumana and Nicolas Camut. According to French radio station Europe 1, that unidentified individual was in Russia.

IN OTHER NEWS       

EPPO ESTIMATES €5B BUDGET DAMAGE BILL: The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) estimates that the total damage to Europe’s budget in 2022 due to misuse of EU funds was €5 billion — considerably more than the €300 million that EU countries reported to the Commission.

Shots fired: “It is safe to assume that, before the establishment of the EPPO, the Commission did not know about the existence of more than 90 percent of suspicions of fraud affecting the financial interests of the EU, which were under investigation by national prosecution services,” said EPPO’s chief Laura Codruța Kövesi.

What about OLAF? Following these revelations, a report previewed by Playbook and published this morning on the investigative journalism platform Follow the Money is highly critical of OLAF, the EU’s anti-fraud watchdog, which the report says has “no bark as well as no bite.”

Unlike the EPPO, which can prosecute crimes directly before national courts, OLAF only makes recommendations to EU countries. A figure that further illustrates the comparison is that while EPPO opened 865 investigations into fraud using EU funds in 2022, OLAF opened 192.

EYES EMOJI: A report published by an obscure EU panel risks turning into a political powder keg after it was released online and then taken down again — apparently at the behest of two center-right MEPs who are also in a romantic relationship. Read the story in full, by Carlo Martuscelli and Helen Collis.

FRIDAY FEATURES: Jack Blanchard sits down with Alf Dubs, the 91-year-old Labour peer who arrived in Britain on the Kindertransport, which organized the rescue of children from the Nazis, on this week’s Westminster Insider podcast … Professor Anu Bradford, author of “Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology,” is the special guest on the EU Confidential podcast … and Paul Dallison’s Declassified humor column is all about Great British ideas, such as chocolate as a weapon, curing COVID with a hairdryer — and eating camel penis.

**The British staycation trend is booming but are short-term lets causing housing woes? Join our experts online on December 5 in London at POLITICO Live’s “The Housing Crisis: The Evolving Landscape” to explore the current state of the U.K. housing sector and discuss necessary changes. Register today!**

AGENDA       

— European Parliament President Roberta Metsola is in Malta; meets students at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology. Watch recording.

— 10th Summit of the Heads of State of the Organization of Turkic States in Astana, Kazakhstan.

— Conference on anti-racism in the European Union in Barcelona.

BRUSSELS CORNER:       

TRAIN STRIKE PSA: Train staff will strike from 10 p.m. November 7 until 10 p.m. November 9, and trains could be canceled or delayed depending on how many workers are present.

DRY OCTOBER: While the recent constant rain in Brussels might suggest otherwise, the beginning of October was the driest and warmest ever recorded in Belgium, according to the Royal Meteorological Institute.

The numbers: The average temperature was 16.6C during the first 10 days of October, beating the previous record of 16C from 1995. (The usual average temperature is 12.5C.) The average maximum temperature reached 21.9C, also beating the record from 1995, when 20.3C was measured.

So dry … The first 10 days of October were also unusually dry, with RMI recording only 0.1 mm of rainfall in Uccle, versus the usual 27.7 mm.

… Then so wet: But the rest of October was wetter than average, and during the last 10 days, there wasn’t a single day without rain.

Speaking of wild weather: The Ciarán storm, which caused train and flights cancellations and park closures in Belgium, has passed, but strong winds are expected today as well as all throughout the weekend.

DE MOOR’S ‘THEATER CARAVAN’ TO DETER MIGRATION: Brussels State Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration Nicole de Moor on Thursday launched a campaign seeking to deter irregular migration from Guinea (the country with fifth-highest number of asylum seekers in Belgium). “Anyone who is not fleeing war or persecution does not belong in the asylum procedure,” de Moor said, adding that three-quarters of Guineans didn’t fulfill the criteria. The campaign aims to raise awareness of the danger of migration, such as exploitation or human trafficking, through a “theater caravan” in cities in Guinea.

ANOTHER ICONIC RESTAURANT CLOSES: La Bécasse, located near the Ixelles cemetery and opened in 1979, closed on Wednesday due to financial difficulties.

WHAT’S ON THIS WEEKEND: Believe it or not, it’s not all about rain and wind this weekend. Here’s what’s on …

Opera: There’s an international opera festival happening November 4-18. Program.

Documentary fans: Mois du Doc, or Belgian Documentary Month, runs until the end of November, featuring French-language Belgian documentaries.

Furniture lovers: The Brussels Furniture Fair is on, kicking off on Sunday and running until next Wednesday. Fun fact: The first one was held in 1937!

Tiny exhibition: The “Small is Beautiful” exhibition, devoted to miniature art, has opened at the Grand Place.

Shopping: It’s the first Sunday of November, which means the vintage market is on.

NEW JOB: Sabrina Bellosi, a former journalist, will take on a new job as a communications adviser to the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell. Bellosi has previously worked in a similar role for Borrell’s predecessor, Federica Mogherini.

BIRTHDAYS: Belgian PM Alexander De Croo turns 48; MEPs Delara Burkhardt and Loránt Vincze; EU Scream’s James Kanter; Friends of Europe’s Geert Cami; Aleksander Arsenovič, mayor of Maribor; Aker’s Yngve Slyngstad, POLITICO 28 alum; Former Finnish PM Antti Rinne; Tara Varma from the Brookings Institution.

CELEBRATING SATURDAY: MEPs Traian Băsescu and Agnes Jongerius; FIGIEFA and ADPA’s Pierre Thibaudat; Finnish politician Matti Vanhanen; Former Australian PM Tony Abbott.

CELEBRATING SUNDAY: MEP Caterina Chinnici; Former MEP and Germany’s Ambassador to Russia Alexander Lambsdorff; Former MEP Goffredo Bettini; MLex’s Lewis Crofts; La Croix’s Céline Schoen; Former Council of Europe Secretary-General and ex-Prime Minister of Norway Thorbjørn Jagland.

THANKS TO: Playbook reporter Ketrin Jochecová and producer Seb Starcevic.

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