A quiet story out of Finland last week deserves more attention than it received.
The country’s public broadcaster Yle reported that in 2024, in the middle of the Gaza war, the Finnish government proposed extending its defense-industrial cooperation agreement with Israel through 2034. Previous extensions ran five years, while this one would run 10. The Finnish Defense Ministry did not announce the agreement publicly. However, 23 joint defense projects are now underway between Finland and Israel.
Israel is now Finland’s second-largest foreign defense supplier. Over the past decade, Helsinki has committed more than 800 million euros to Israeli weapons systems: 316 million euros for the David’s Sling air-defense system, with a 213 million euro option attached; 213 million euros for Spike anti-tank missiles; and 162 million euros for Gabriel anti-ship missiles. Finland’s defense minister called David’s Sling “critically important” to national air defense.
Finnish public opinion has not undergone a corresponding turn toward Israel. A 2025 poll found 48% of Finns favor recognizing a Palestinian state against 24% opposed to it. Helsinki has publicly condemned Israeli settlement expansion. Yet at the same time, it is locking in a defense partnership with Jerusalem that will run into the 2030s.
The contradiction is not an anomaly. It is the story.
Sentiment doesn’t explain it, but geography does. Finland shares a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, joined NATO in 2023 after decades of non-alignment and maintains a potential wartime force of roughly 280,000 troops. War, for Finnish planners, is something to prepare for, not a subject for the history department.
For much of the postwar era, Western Europeans didn’t have to think seriously about territorial defense.
In contrast, look at Iceland: It is small, wealthy, and secular, like Finland. But it has no army, no land border with Russia and a population that is, if anything, more pro-Palestinian than most of Europe. Some 72.5% sympathized more with the Palestinians in a 2024 survey against 9.5% with Israel, and a majority favored cutting diplomatic relations with Israel altogether.
Reykjavik doesn’t need Spike missiles or David’s Sling, however. Helsinki does. Put the two countries side by side and public opinion alone tells you little about defense policy. Strategic exposure tells you considerably more.
This isn’t a Finland story so much as a story with Finland as the clearest example. Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states share Finland’s problem—Russia next door—and increasingly share its instincts. Czech officials have gone so far as to compare the threat Russia poses to Central Europe with the threat Iran poses to Israel. It’s a comparison that Israeli officials are only too happy to hear repeated.
Greece and Cyprus, facing pressure in the increasingly contested Eastern Mediterranean, particularly in their relations with Turkey, have arrived at a similar conclusion. Athens calls Israel an outright strategic partner. On Aug. 31, Greece signed a 3.035 billion euro agreement with Israel to develop the “Achilles Shield,” an integrated air, missile and drone defense system.
Cyprus, too, has deepened both bilateral defense cooperation with Israel and trilateral cooperation with Athens and Jerusalem.
Norway complicates the pattern, and the exception is instructive. It borders Russia and takes the Russian threat seriously. It also recognized Palestinian statehood in 2024 and has stayed firmly behind Palestinian sovereignty ever since.
What distinguishes Norway is not exposure but room for maneuver. It has immense energy wealth, a robust defense industry of its own and access to alternative suppliers. It is less dependent on what Israel is selling. Vulnerability alone does not produce strategic closeness to Israel, but vulnerability combined with dependence can.
Western Europe runs on a different domestic political logic. Gaza has become a highly salient public and electoral issue. Pro-Palestinian activism is widespread, and in countries such as France, Britain, Belgium and Germany, sizable Muslim communities are a major part of the political environment.
A 2025 YouGov poll across six major Western European countries found only 13% to 21% holding a favorable view of Israel, against 63% to 70% unfavorable. Those numbers reflect domestic politics as well as views of the ongoing war itself.
But domestic politics isn’t the only force in play, and it may not be the decisive one for long. For much of the postwar era, Western Europeans didn’t have to think seriously about territorial defense. American guarantees and steady prosperity made that unnecessary. Russia’s war in Ukraine ended the holiday. Defense budgets are climbing across the continent, and with them, a set of questions Europe has not asked in a generation: Who defends this border, with what and how fast?
Sooner or later, that reckoning will collide with another habit of Western European thinking: viewing Israel mainly through the lens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Countries already confronting immediate security threats are more likely to see another side of Israel as a small state that has built military technology, doctrine and institutions around persistent vulnerability. They may criticize Israeli policy, condemn its conduct in Gaza and support Palestinian statehood, yet still regard Israel as an unusually valuable security partner.
Finland is simply where that contradiction has become especially visible in writing, with a signature attached.
