Educate me on Karelia vs. Palestine

Great Debates
1

I’ll readily admit that I’m staggeringly ignorant of history. So could anybody give a “History for Drooling Idiots” summary on the differing outcomes of the loss of Karelia vs. the Palestinian conflict?

Here’s the staggeringly-ignorant perspective on things:

In 1940, Finland loses a war with Russia and is forced to give away Karelia. They lose a lot of land, a lot of productive capacity, they evacuate and resettle several hundred thousand people, pay their other war reparations, and sixty years later they’re selling cellphones to the rest of the world.

In the late 1940s, the Arabs lose a war with Israel and lose a bunch of land. They lose some land, whatever productive capacity was there (was there much beyond farming?), several hundred thousand people are forced to evacuate, and sixty years later they’re lobbing rockets into Israel.

Can the two conflicts and their aftermaths legitimately be compared/contrasted, or are the circumstances significantly different?

(This is more of a GQ-ish question, but I suppose it’s GD territory.)

2

I doubt the Soviet union would have shown similar restraint as the Israelis if we started bombing Karelia with rockets. Besides, Karelia is not a holy place for us Finns and even thou the loss was huge, most Finns accepted the fact that there was no way of reclaiming Karelia.

3

No one in Finland thought the Soviet Union was going anywhere. By contrast, it was possible for Palestinians to initially believe that the “so-called”* State of Israel was a temporary abberation forced on the Arab world by British imperialism and American hegemony. Perhaps one factor is the example of the Crusader states: western enclaves that were eventually reabsorbed.

*NOT my characterization, merely playing devil’s advocate here.

4

Another significant difference would be that “Finland” (a country) did not correspond to “the Arabs” (not a country). If Palestine had been part of a much larger country (say Egypt or Syria) the problem would probably be history by now (see: Turkish and Caucasian Greeks, Turks from the Balkans, Germans from former parts of Germany…)

5

No, and yes. History is interesting, though. Look into it.

6

The problem is the United Nations.

Before the war shift of populations was the norm. Thousands of Greeks lived in Turkey and thousands of Turks in Greece. These populations were forced to move.

In Dobruja there was an exchange of populations between Bulgaria and Romaina.

The Soviets actually offered the Finns MORE territory without a war. But the Finns refused thinking they’d wind up like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

After the Finns lost the Soviets annexed much Finnish territory. Most of the Finns left. They didn’t want to be in the Soviet Union. The Soviets created the Karelia SSR. The thing was this was the only SSR that the “name people” (the Karelians) didn’t form a majority or plurality of the population. In otherwords in the Estonian SSR most people were Estonians. In the Armenian SSR most people were Armenians. Because of this the Karelia SSR was reabsobed into the Russian SSR, which is today Russia.

After WWII Russia didn’t want to give back the part of Poland they had seized through their agreement with Hitler. The Allies then gave Poland a huge chunk of Germany. Indeed about a third of present day Poland is in what used to be Germany.

But then you had huge numbers of Poles in the USSR and huge number of Germans in Poland. So they forced the Poles to move west into what was now Poland and the Germans were forced into the new boundaries of Poland.

Then after WWII India was divided into two countries Pakistan (which later divided into Pakistan and Bangladesh) and India. India being Hindu (but secular) and Pakistan being a Muslim state. Well many Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs were left on the wrong side of the border. So the populations shifted agains. With millions of people harmed or killed.

Now what does this have to do with the UN? The UN stepped in seeing all this transfer of populations put it into its charter that NO LONGER would the shift of populations be acceptable.

So bring it to present day Israel/Palestine and you have Israel winning a war with people fleeing. If the pre WWII order was in place the “rule” would’ve been simple. You lost the war - tough. In fact the rest of the Arabs would’ve likely been forced out.

But the UN said “No transfer of populations.” The UN guaranteed the right of all Palestians to go back to their land. Not to be compensated for it, but to return to the EXACT same place they were force out of during the war.

That wouldn’t even jive with America. Can you image having no eminent domain in America.

Further complicating the fact is that Israeli boundaries mean different things. Some like Jordan and Egypt want the Pre 1967 boundaries. Some want the boundries of the original UN plan, and a few want Israel out all together.

It’s not without precident the Israel/Palestine thing. You have India and Pakistan fighting just as long over Kashmere and France and Germany fought for decades over Alsace-Lorraine.

The only difference is in those struggles the nations are only fighting over PART of a territory. In the Israel/Palestine situation it’s the WHOLE of the area.

BTW the Russians and Finns have talked about returning the territories but few Finns want them back as virtually all the Finns have left Karelia and what is there today are mostly ethinic Russians. While Russia says the matter is closed the Finns say they are not opposed to the return of the territory by vote but have no interest in getting it back unless mutually wanted by the Finns, Russians and people of Karelia

7

It was also a bad deal. While the Soviets were offering a larger piece of land, the land they were offering was arctic forest which they were trying to trade for cultivated farmland and industrial cities.