{"id":1036134,"date":"2026-09-01T02:38:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T02:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1036134\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T02:38:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T02:38:22","slug":"expert-explaines-finlands-israel-policy-is-driven-by-upcoming-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1036134\/","title":{"rendered":"Expert explaines Finland’s Israel policy is driven by upcoming elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finland<\/a> is sending seemingly contradictory messages on Israel, ending its multi-year funding agreement with UNRWA<\/a> while quietly deepening defense cooperation with the Jewish state, even as Helsinki has become increasingly critical of Israel\u2019s war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The contrast has become increasingly striking. Over the past week, Finland announced it has chosen not to renew its multi-year funding agreement with UNRWA after it expires this year.<\/p>\n

Finnish Foreign Trade Minister Ville Tavio said that this does not signify a reduction in Finland\u2019s humanitarian efforts in Palestinian territories, as it will instead contribute to organizations like the World Food Programme.<\/p>\n

Then, it was quietly confirmed that Finland has extended a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for defense cooperation with Israel<\/a> over the next decade that will include research and development, cooperation, and procurement of defense equipment.<\/p>\n

The MoU was approved by Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen in early 2024, but was not made public. The agreement will last until 2034.<\/p>\n

\"AA David’s Sling interceptor launching during the Israel-Hamas war; illustrative. (credit: Instagram\/Israel Air Force)<\/p>\n

Some of these developments can be seen as slightly contradictory to Finnish foreign and domestic policy in recent years. Finland<\/a> has been actively critical of Israel\u2019s military efforts in Gaza, and just recently signed a statement condemning the E1 settlement project. Yet, it signed the MOU and procured Israel\u2019s David\u2019s Sling air defense system in 2023 for \u20ac316 million.<\/p>\n

UNRWA funding was previously suspended in January 2024, then restarted, and has now stopped again.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n

Elections shaping Finland’s policy with Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBasically, I think it comes down to domestic politics in Finland and the approaching elections [next April],\u201d Dr. Timo Stewart told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. Stewart is a Finnish political scientist and senior researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, specializing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Western policy in the Middle East, and the role of religion in conflicts and politics.<\/p>\n

He explained that the minister in charge of all the development cooperation funds from which the UNRWA funding comes is Ville Tavio, the minister for trade from the right-wing populist Finns Party (which is part of the coalition). His party has long been critical of UNRWA, and, according to Stewart, \u201chappy to see UNRWA from Israel\u2019s perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tavio was responsible for previously freezing UNRWA funding back in 2024. As the current funding agreement is coming to an end this year, all Tavio is doing is saying he is not renewing it for another five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that he can do as minister for foreign trade and development, but which is at odds with what the foreign minister [Elina Valdemar] has been saying over the past couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stewart said this is unusual in the sense that foreign policy in Finland is generally something that the Finnish government aims to have a fairly high degree of consensus on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael-Palestine related issues during the term of this government have been something of an exception,\u201d he told the Post.<\/p>\n

He cited various examples of this, including the governmental row over whether to recognize a Palestinian state or not. It was ultimately decided not to.<\/p>\n

Stewart said the context for Tavio\u2019s UNRWA decision is that the Finns Party is \u201ctrying to burnish its image as a party with strong policies of its own and being the anti-immigration party in Finland.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want to show that they\u2019re tough on their themes and with UNRWA being quite unpopular with their voters, it pretty much explains the UNRWA decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shift among Finns over Israel-Palestine<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Stewart said Israel-Palestine \u201cisn\u2019t exactly the number one concern for Finns,\u201d there has been a shift in Helsinki\u2019s policy \u2013 in many ways, in seemingly opposite directions.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter October 7, it\u2019s been in the news a lot. And it has moved up quite a bit on the list of issues that the government has had to discuss,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just been a very polarizing issue. There\u2019s a great many Finns who feel quite strongly one way or the other. And this has also meant that it\u2019s been more present in inter-government dynamics and also the dynamics between the opposition and the government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Finns Party, for example, has used the topic of Israel for voting traction, he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve identified Israel as sort of engaged in a similar fight against immigration and Islamism, or terrorism or Islamist terrorism,\u201d Stewart told the Post.<\/p>\n

The Finns Party also has a significant voter base among Christian Zionists, and so pro-Israel \u2013 or at least not pro-Palestine \u2013 rhetoric works in their favor.<\/p>\n

Outside of the Finns Party, Stewart said there has been \u201ca marked shift in the general population, becoming quite a lot more critical towards Israel than they used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government has tried to do a balancing act, and in some instances, has actually deepened cooperation with Israel,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Defense is one of Finland’s top priorities<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

This links to the topic of the MoU.<\/p>\n

Stewart explained that the reason Finland is concerned about its own defense is because of Russia, which it has seen as an increasing existential threat since Moscow\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n

Since the Russia-Ukraine war began, Finland has significantly scaled up its military readiness, defense spending, and manpower plans. Finland maintains a core wartime strength of 280,000 to 300,000 troops, but it has increased the number of reservists participating in mandatory refresher training exercises by roughly 50%. Its defense spending has also risen past 2.5% of its GDP. Furthermore, shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, Finland officially joined NATO.<\/p>\n

As such, having defense systems like David\u2019s Sling is of paramount importance to Finland due to the relative advancement of Russian missiles and drones. Finland has already faced drone incursions from Russia.<\/p>\n

Regarding the MoU, Stewart said it was not classified information. Rather, he said, it was likely that the government simply chose not to advertise it at \u201ca time when events in Gaza were in the news all the time, and Israel was seen as a bit of a risky trading partner in [the] weapons trade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that it has been made public, \u201cthe opposition has latched onto it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been this dual messaging, whereas there\u2019s actually quite a lot of defense cooperation going on between Finland and Israel,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut the government has been trying to downplay it somewhat. And this memorandum seems to confirm that there is actually quite a lot going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another reason for the secrecy is that Finland takes a fairly cautious stance when it comes to foreign policy, typically following in the wake of its EU partners, Steward said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at the EU spectrum, Finland has been somewhere in the middle. Maybe a little bit on the cautious side, in a lot of the statements. There\u2019s been harsh criticism, yes, but usually only when the key EU partners or a clear majority of EU countries are also saying the same thing. Finland hasn\u2019t been an outlier like Spain [or] Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same governmental split regarding UNRWA has implications for weapons procurement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe military and the Defense Ministry will choose to buy weapons that they think are best for Finland, and then the Foreign Ministry pursues the foreign policy that they think is in line with Finland\u2019s interests and values. And you could see a clash when it comes to arms trade with Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another reason that Israel is in the spotlight in the Finnish government is because of Israel\u2019s relationship with Russia, and its decision to cease exporting certain weapons to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Israel is not supplying weapons to Ukraine because it does not want to antagonize Russia, is it possible that Finland might run into similar difficulties should we have need of weapons?\u201d<\/p>\n

In February 2022, then-president of Finland Sauli Niinisto said: \u201cEven in the best of circumstances, the dire asymmetry of the relationship makes Russia a potential existential threat to Finland. The core of Finland\u2019s foreign and security policy has always been about the management of this threat.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would appear the Israel MoU is just one of the ways Helsinki is aiming to do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finland is sending seemingly contradictory messages on Israel, ending its multi-year funding agreement with UNRWA while quietly deepening…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1036135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[414595,28111,116,99,414596,1802,50],"class_list":["post-1036134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-david-sling","tag-defense-industry","tag-finland","tag-israel","tag-israel-missile-defense","tag-military","tag-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117193469466718849","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1036135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}