In a historic turn of electoral tides, Brazil’s incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defeated far-right opponent Flávio Bolsonaro on Sunday (25 October,) alleviating fears that a Bolsonaro-dynasty comeback would topple the world’s fourth-largest democracy. 

Following a disastrous first-round election for Lula on 4 October, in which he narrowly lost a majority in Brazil’s national congress, the Workers’ party leader overturned predictions to become the first president to win the second round of voting after losing the first one.

First-round voting gave 47 percent for former president Jair Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio, and his rightwing Liberal Party, whose voters mainly represent wealthy and emerging middle classes in the south of Brazil, as well as evangelical Christians, one of the largest religious groups in the country. 

Lula’s northeastern, working class, multi-racial support base only made up 45 percent of all primary votes, but climted to 51.8 percent in Sunday’s second-round of the presidential election. 

Despite setting a record in being the first Brazilian president to win four non-consecutive terms, Lula’s triumph still leaves room for possible conflict. 

Bolsonaro, whose campaign capitalised on continuing the work of his divisive father, who is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election, refused to concede defeat – leaving an open window for history to repeat itself. 

“We’ll request the annulment of these elections,” Bolsonaro told the press after votes had been counted, accusing Brazil’s Supreme Court of having “changed the rules of the game in the middle of the game,” by ordering polls to stay open for two more hours on Sunday.

What Brazil’s nationalist candidate declared as “unacceptable” was an idea initially intended to facilitate all Brazilians’ attendance at the polls, since multiple areas were reported to have been affected by public transport problems. 

Bolsonaro’s issue with the courts is another link in the chain of power-hungry promises he had made during his campaign to “re-democratise this country”.

Without guidance on what that could mean beyond his publicised desire to extend the duration of presidential terms, many voters fearfully associated his remarks with a potential coup, or with Jair Bolsonaro’s infamous liking for authoritarian rulers – including Brazil’s own 1964-1985 dictatorship.

‘Lula’s army’

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Israel’s election on Tuesday (27 October) could bring a new government without changing the country’s course. Having worked as a parliamentary adviser in the Knesset and later as executive director of Peace Now, I know how that can happen.

Many of the parties seeking to replace Benjamin Netanyahu are avoiding clear positions on the Israeli-Palestinian question, but some of their candidates may end up overseeing annexation they never campaigned for.

Israel’s previous coalition, led by Naftali Bennett in 2021, offers a warning.

Called the “government of change” because it ended Netanyahu’s 12-year run in office, it brought together a variety of parties, from Bennett’s rightwing party to Labor and Meretz, leftwing parties.

Its answer to profound ideological disagreements, particularly over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was to preserve the status quo. The coalition lasted roughly 18 months, and although it changed the tone of government, it left much of the policy towards the West Bank intact.

For example, Merav Michaeli, then Labor leader and transport minister, opposed settlement expansion.

Yet her ministry continued to implement previously approved infrastructure commitments, including substantial budgets for roads facilitating that expansion.

Through my work at Peace Now, I saw how the coalition’s status-quo agreement constrained her ability to challenge projects inherited from the previous government. A minister could thus find herself implementing a vision she opposed.

Today, the stakes are higher.

Another slice of the West Bank

Consider E1, between Jerusalem and the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, where construction would threaten Palestinian territorial contiguity and the viability of a future Palestinian state.

The government has advanced tenders for all 3,401 planned housing units, with crucial stages of the tender process set to be completed before a new government takes office.

E1 exemplifies wider efforts to establish difficult-to-reverse facts: new settlement outposts, including in areas under Palestinian civil administration, expanding settlements and administrative changes that entrench Israeli control.

A successor government would have to intervene actively to reverse them.

These developments are backed by an explicit political vision. The current government’s guidelines and coalition agreements assert exclusive Jewish rights throughout the land of Israel and commit to advancing Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank.

Under Bezalel Smotrich, serving as a minister within the defence ministry, a new settlement administration and civilian positions have been established, shifting significant aspects of West Bank governance from military administration to civilian political control.

These structures will not disappear when their architects leave office. The far-right has equipped the state with both a vision and the machinery to advance it.

Inertia is not neutral when the machinery is already moving in one direction.

Parties seeking to replace Netanyahu need not necessarily agree on a final-status agreement with the Palestinians, but they must find enough common ground to commit to halting annexation and reversing the structures that enable it.

Those understandings belong in coalition negotiations, when parties still have leverage, rather than in battles left for individual ministers once they are in office.

Nor is this a distant constitutional question. Palestinians in the West Bank already face systematic violations of their basic rights and freedoms, from restrictions on movement and access to land to violence and forced displacement. Each new settlement and outpost deepens this injustice and makes the prospect of a political settlement more remote.

Facts on ground

The entrenchment of permanent Israeli control is creating a reality that is increasingly difficult to reverse, making political intervention more urgent with every passing year.

The current government’s response to growing international pressure illustrates the danger.

After the UK announced measures targeting settlements, foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar ordered the closure of its consulate in East Jerusalem. Britain considered expelling Israeli diplomats in response, and a compromise left a much smaller British mission operating.

The episode illustrates Netanyahu’s vision of a ‘Super Sparta’: an Israel preparing itself for international isolation rather than addressing the policies contributing to it.

A future government seeking to change that trajectory should start with two tasks.

‘Messianic minority’

First, it must take seriously the reasons behind international sanctions and address the policies driving them, including settlement expansion and settler violence. A messianic minority must not be allowed to drag Israel into international isolation and economic decline.

Second, the government should help European partners distinguish between Israel and the settlements, including through transparent supply chains and clear proof of origin, so that restrictions aimed at settlements do not spill over into the broader Israeli economy.

Both tasks require urgent and concrete policy changes, beyond a more moderate diplomatic tone.

European governments should not expect a new coalition, or even international sanctions themselves, to bring about these changes automatically. They need to make their expectations explicit, press prospective coalition partners to incorporate concrete commitments into their agreements, and judge the resulting government by its actions.

Without that pressure, politicians who never endorsed annexation may become useful idiots for a project they do not support, helping to consolidate a single undemocratic state in which millions of Palestinians are permanently denied equal rights and freedoms.

Preventing that outcome requires urgent political action, while a different future is still possible. Neither Israelis seeking change nor their European partners can afford to assume it will happen on its own.

The Ukraine battlefield is the hottest part of Russia’s war on the West, but not the only one. The Kremlin is betting that sabotage, intimidation and other sub-threshold attacks will make Ukraine’s allies so distracted, scared and tired that they cut their support to Kyiv. Meanwhile Russia’s political warfare is reaping rewards in Africa, Asia and Latin America. 

The widening fronts in this global conflict are ably depicted in a new book, We Shall Outlast Them: Putin’s Global Campaign to Defeat the West by Hanna Notte.

The Berlin-based, Oxbridge-educated Russia expert unpicks Kremlin influence operations in a dozen-plus countries. Her reporting is meticulous, the descriptions vivid, and the conclusion bleak: Russia is using the West’s own weakness to beat us. 

One paradox is globalisation: the West’s main project since the collapse of communism, but which now undermines its sanctions efforts.

‘Eurasian roundabout’

China, North Korea, Iran and other countries in what Notte calls the “Eurasian roundabout” help Russia export and import what it needs to keep its war machine running.

Hard-headed shipping magnates in Dubai will not stop dealing with the “shadow fleet”, any more than Indian energy tycoons will shun cheap oil. It’s just business, they tell her. 

But not only that.

Many in the mis-named “Global South” instinctively despise Ukraine as an American proxy. The irony is head-spinning: Ukraine is treated as a pariah for its ties to a supposed patron that has now all but abandoned it.

As well as exploiting anti-Americanism (whatever that means these days) Russia also draws on deep historical sympathies that are all but incomprehensible seen from the former captive nations of Europe. 

Many influential Africans, for example, have bitter first-hand or inherited memories of US treatment of their continent in the Cold War, including support for apartheid-era South Africa.

They also have a rose-tinted view of the Soviet Union, which supported their liberation struggle. Some studied there. That Ukraine is the victim of a revanchist imperialist Russia makes no sense to them; interviewed by Notte, they struggle to see it as a real country.

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The US and Israeli-led war with Iran, launched in late February, and other military campaigns in the region have disrupted flights, leaving around 5,500 deportations that would normally receive support from the EU’s border agency Frontex unexecuted.

The disruption comes despite the Warsaw-based agency’s recent announcement that returns rose in the first half of 2026, with Syrians and Iraqis among the 10 nationalities most frequently deported.

Internally, however, Frontex appears concerned.

In July, it highlighted return problems because of the Middle East crisis, a broad swathe of conflicts that has seen various airspace closures over Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Israel, Qatar, Syria, and the UAE.

It said roughly 4,000 returns had not been carried out because of direct cancellations or broader operational standstills, with member states halting the organisation or scheduling of Frontex-supported returns due to the Middle East conflicts.

By 30 September, that figure had climbed to 5,500.

Although now open (as of publication), airspace restrictions, route availability and operational measures may be introduced, amended or lifted rapidly, sometimes with little notice.

European deportation setbacks typically involve everything from fragmented national systems, to people absconding, and to foreign states refusing to accept their own nationals. But war and conflict are now adding another layer of complications.

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