How is the Israel/Palestine conflict seen in Finland?

Nothing particularly important happened in Finnish politics on week 39, so I thought I might write something on the Israel/Palestine conflict.

Certainly, Hamas' brutal attack on civilians surprised many. Not the least of the surprised were IDF and Netanyahu's government who, according to the Israeli press, have recently focused their energies mainly on the northern border and the expansion of West Bank settlements. Now Israel has been bombing Gaza to smithereens, resulting in countless civilian casualties, and is most obviously preparing a ground attack, which could lead to anything from a defeat resembling 2006 war in Lebanon to the complete scouring of Gaza.

All this has naturally brought the conflict in the Middle East to the global center stage in a new way. This can be seen even in Finnish politics, even though the Middle Eastern conflict has generally had less valence in Finland than in many other countries, at least in recent decades. It is not unimportant, by any means, it has simply often far easier for Finns to not pay attention to the events in the Holy Land than for many others, expect when something dramatic happens.

This focus has even managed to survive the news about suspected gas pipeline sabotage in the Baltic have not dominated the news cycle. Even with shady happenings in Finland’s immediate vicinity, at least one eye remains turned towards souther still. There is a lot of information and direct war propaganda circulating on the internet, and many details await confirmation. But still, how is the Middle Eastern conflict seen in Finland, and have the recent events changed anything?

Like most European countries, Finland has recognized Israel since 1948. Relations between the countries have been reasonably cordial, with a fair amount of economic cooperation and trade in military materials. While Finland does not recognize the State of Palestine, diplomatic ties and missions do exist, and Finland participates in development projects in the Palestinian areas, both through UNWRA and otherwise.

As Finland is a member of the Western block, as of recent months a member of NATO, even before that an EU member – the Finnish foreign policy generally follows the official European lines. That is, Finland is formally committed to solving the crisis through a two-state solution but has not really taken many concrete actions towards actualizing this, at least recently. Of course, it’s very unlikely that the situation is going to turn any more pro-Palestinian in the immediate near future, unless Israel really gets into actual ethnic cleansing vis-à-vis Gaza.

While there are bursts of interests when something happens, at the less official levels many people have also tended to react to events with a rather neutral stance. “Desert peoples killing each other”, brusque (and bigoted) as that statement is, has characterized many person-of-the-street’s opinions about the wars. At some basic level, once the initial shock wears off, most people just don’t care.

The two groups in the society that do care – in addition to Jews and Muslims, the first group being tiny and the second only somewhat less tiny, in Finland – are the socialist leftists, who are almost all pro-Palestinian, often fiercely so, and Christian Evangelicals who are almost all pro-Israel, often fiercely so.

Of course, since neither of these groups enjoys a lot of social credibility (indeed, most would probably view these as equally obnoxious fanatics), this just leaves the rest of society less willing to take sides. Since I have a long history in the previous group, I have myself observed the Palestinian cause receeding in the background in the list of international causes the Finnish left does care about, while Kurdish solidarity, for instance, has come more to fore.

Still, there exists at least some level of historical pro-Israel feeling among the wider Finnish right and at least sympathy towards the Palestinian rights in the wider Finnish left. In the case of the latter this is an extension of the general anti-colonialist, Third-World-friendly attitudes common even among the Social Democrats, historically, while in the previous case it is affected both by sympathy towards the idea of Israel as a small nation being threatened by the entire Arab world, shopworn as it is at this point, and suspicion of Arab nationalism as a Soviet plot.

It’s not particularly surprising, for instance, that the government pressing for a Holocaust denial law would be this government, as described here – in addition to offering something concrete as a proof that the government has *some* form of a plan against racism in general, it now gains new impetus by comparing the Hamas operation past atrocities against Jews.

There also exists a general Finnish tendency to support the underdog as a result of, well, being the underdog, insofar as global politics go. This means that while the older generations – whose perception of the Middle Eastern conflict is that it’s little Israel fighting against the combined might of the Arab world – are reflexively often sympathetic to Israel, the younger generations – whose perception is the one of an established high-tech country whaling on militants with stones and small rockets – don’t share the same attitude.

Insofar as the actual crisis goes, the Finnish government’s response has consisted offering (moral) support to Israel and condemning Hamas for terrorism. There have been demands for Finland to end its support to the Palestinian Authority entirely, though thus far, Valtonen has (wisely) refrained from this step. The used terms have been somewhat less balanced than previously, though I’m not sure how much this is due to a change in government and how much over the general vibe shift created by the scale of the attack.  

There’s a noticeable rise in pro-Israel attitudes in the Finnish social media, both in the sense of right-wingers and some center-leftists being more willing than previously to say that they’ll back the Israeli response no matter what and in the sense of leftists being rather quiet about the whole affair.

Well, at least I haven’t seen the sort of pro-Hamas reactions I’ve seen from some of the danker corners of the American left, though those reactions are predictably being spread around the social media purposefully and exaggerated as a part of an information struggle. In addition to the scale of the attack, all of this might be due to that the Ukraine war has made it easier to associate Russia with all manner of "anti-West" political forces, including Palestinian militants in this case.  

Personally, I have generally supported a two-state solution on the 1967 borders as the solution that seems the most consistent to the international law and has the least potential for a complete breakdown and bloodshed on whatever side. (A two-state solution is also the official position of the Finnish Left Alliance). I’ve seen a fair amount of left-wingers who support a one-state solution state that ’the door is closed to the two-state solution’/’two-state solution is now impossible’ etc. without clearly enunciating what the possible route to one-state solution then is apart from continuation of the ongoing trend towards ’there is one state, and it is Israel’.

Naturally, I’d also like Israel to not enact a large-scale ethnic cleansing of Gaza and I’d also like Hamas to somehow not exist, but I’m fairly sure my opinion on these matters counts for somewhere around zilch, insofar as matters stand now.

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