Norway’s huge sovereign wealth fund, fueled by the country’s oil revenues over the past 25 years, has become a target of harsh criticism from both supporters of Palestine and now the United Nations. The so-called Oil Fund has been accused of contributing to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and even genocide in Gaza through various investments.
It’s not the first time Norway’s Oil Fund has been criticized for investing in what the UN’s special rapporteur Francesca Albanese refers to as Israel’s “economy of occupation.” Several humanitarian organizations including Save the Children and Norwegian People’s Aid have claimed it’s “unacceptable” for the Oil Fund to invest “in companies that contribute to destroying children’s lives in the occupied areas.” Norway’s largest trade union federations also deplore such investments and have long called for boycotts of Israeli goods at well, as have several Norwegian political parties.
Norway’s Labour Party-led government, like others before it, continues to resist such boycotts and defends the Oil Fund, set up 25 years ago by then-Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg who later served two more terms and became secretary general of NATO. Stoltenberg currently serves as Norway’s finance minister and is now politically responsible for the fund that has long ranked among the world’s largest.
He’s been put on the defensive, especially as Albanese sends her “critical findings” about what’s known internationally as Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) to the UN’s Human Rights Council this month. In one of her recent letters to the Norwegian government (external link to the government’s website), she expressed the most concern over the fund’s USD 121.5 billion worth of holdings in 50 companies “identified as involved in supporting or enabling egregious violations of international law in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Albanese also stressed what she calls the “structural entanglement” of Israeli corporations “in the machinery of the occupation both in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, and the violence that sustains it.” She claims several international corporations that have benefited from the Norwegian Oil Fund’s investments are also “critical components of the infrastructure sustaining the economy of occupation.”
The UN’s latest report claims Israel has gone beyond its “occupation economy,” and that the Norwegian Oil Fund’s investments in Israeli companies are helping to finance that. While acknowledging some divestment, the UN special rapporteur wrote that other Oil Fund investments “continue to have a devastating impact on the most basic rights of the Palestinian people.” She doesn’t think Norway, “as one of the leading voices and defenders of international law,” will want “to bring this responsibility upon its people.” Therefore, she claimed, “divestment is required.”
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Stoltenberg, however, continue to fend off such criticism and calls for divestment, mostly by pointing to the independence of the fund and how it’s guided by its own ethics committee. It was set up to prevent government interference in the fund’s investments and, as Stoltenberg wrote back to Albanese, “there is broad political consensus that the Fund is not a political instrument, including in foreign policy, beyond its financial objective.”
Stoltenberg, in his 17-page response to Albanese (external link) before she sent her report to the UN’s Human Rights Council, also wrote at length about how the Norwegian government has already and repeatedly “condemned violations of international law” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Norway has also called for the violence to cease, for all hostages to be released, for resumption of humanitarian aid to Gaza and that the “continued presence of Israel” in occupied Palestinian territory is “unlawful and must come to an end.” That still seems unlikely, given the most recent statements by Israeli leaders.
Stoltenberg, however, continues to defend the Oil Fund’s investments, stressing how they amount to minority stakes. He also wrote that the Norwegian government remains “confident that the (Oil Fund’s) investments do not violate Norway’s obligations under international law, in particular the obligations incumbent in all states arising from the unlawful presence of certain of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Researchers at the University of Stavanger (located in the city known as Norway’s oil capital) have also found that selling out of companies in the Oil Fund has had minimal effect on their share prices. Only 14 percent of those divested by the Oil Fund in the past ended up taking steps to make them attractive enough for the Oil Fund to reinvest.
At a recent meeting with foreign correspondents in Oslo, Stoltenberg stressed that “Norway has a very strong voice in this conflict, has stated the occupation is illegal and that what Israel is doing is way out of proportion … and we have pulled out of some companies operating on the West Bank.” He said he was always “very careful” when talking about specific companies, but noted that “we are not out of all companies active on the West Bank, like Volvo or Carlsberg, because they are not viewed as contributing to the war.” He also stressed that it has been important to invest in some companies that could help the Palestinians.
Critics in Norway who welcome the UN’s report and its demands dismiss their government’s attempts to justify what Albanese also calls a “normalization” of illegalities. “Albanese stands on solid ground in her allegations,” editorialized newspaper Dagsavisen this week. “The ethics behind the Oil Fund’s investments do not.”
Liv Tørres at Norway’s largest trade union confederation LO (which supports Stoltenberg’s and Støre’s Labout Party) told newspaper Klassekampen that “we say the same thing she (Albanese) is saying: It’s unacceptable for any investments in companies that contribute to the (Israeli) occupation, violation of the Rule of Law and, in practice, genocide in Palestine.” LO is glad the Norwegian government has formally recognized Palestine, over strong Israeli objections, but many members thus view the Oil Fund’s investments and any made profits on them as hypocritical.
“Norway looks more and more like a war profiteer,” wrote commentator Frode Bjerkestrand in newspaper Bergens Tidende last month. He referred to how proposals in Parliament from parties including the Reds, Greens and the Socialist Left, asking the Oil Fund to sell itself out of Israeli companies, failed to get a majority. “It’s really embarrassing,” Bjerkstrand in his column that was reprinted in Norway’s biggest newspaper Aftenposten. While the Oil Fund has excluded some, managers of other large investment and pension funds in Norway, including KLP and Storebrand, have excluded many more companies because of their contributions to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian areas.
Organizations including Save the Children and Amnesty have sent letters to the Oil Fund’s ethics committee outlining their “expectations for a concrete change of practice.” Others including a group of historians claim that at least 30 of 64 companies doing business in Israel should be excluded from the Oil Fund. At the start of this year, the fund had invested around NOK 55 billion in 14 companies that were on a UN list of contributors to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
“The Norwegian government has been very clear in its condemnations of what Israel has been doing (in Gaza and the West Bank), and in its recognition of Palestine as its own state,” editorialized Dagsavisen. “It’s therefore incomprehensible for more and more of us that the Oil Fund continues to invest in the same occupation it criticizes.”
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund