The Norwegian parliament recently rejected efforts to tighten rules on its huge sovereign wealth fund investing in companies operating in the West Bank. 

Despite Norway’s central role in the initiation of the two-state peace process in the 1990s, the Norwegian lawmakers voted 88 to 16 against a proposal that would have ordered the fund to withdraw from companies “that contribute to Israel’s war crimes and the illegal occupation” of the West Bank.

Fueled by vast revenue from Norway’s abundant oil and gas exports, the country’s sovereign wealth fund is the biggest in the world and has some $1.8 trillion invested around the globe. 

Its precedence-setting example matters, especially as it prides itself on the fact that many companies are excluded from its portfolios “on ethical grounds”.

Why then the vote for continued war crimes, illegal occupation and ethnic cleansing?

Double standards

According to its ethical guidelines, the fund cannot invest money in companies that directly or indirectly contribute to killing, torture, deprivation of freedom or other violations of human rights in conflict situations or wars. 

But in practice, the fund is allowed to invest in a number of arms-producing companies, as only some kind of weapons, such as nuclear arms, are banned by the ethical guidelines as investment objects.

In the past two decades, the fund has excluded some Israeli companies, but in a highly restrictive manner, including Elbit Systems (September 2009), due to supply of surveillance systems for the Israeli West Bank barrier; Africa Israel Investments and Danya Cebus (August 2010), and Shikun Uvinui (June 2012), due to violation of international humanitarian law in occupied Palestinian territory by being involved in developing settlements.

Such exclusions create an impression of token concern because there are dozens and dozens of both Israeli and international companies operating in the West Bank, even as its Palestinian residents are under constant threat of violence and ethnic cleansing.

In Norway, the government was under pressure to use its financial clout to influence Israel’s policies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, where its settlement policy has long been deemed illegal under international law. 

Some 50 Norwegian NGOs, spearheaded by the country’s main union, called on the Labour government to ensure that the fund’s investments were in line with the country’s legal obligations.

Meanwhile, UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, urged Oslo to “fully and unconditionally divest from all entities linked to Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory”. 

In his reply of May 30, Norway’s finance minister Jens Stoltenberg said the Norwegian government was deeply concerned by developments in Palestine, both in Gaza and in the West Bank. Then he proceeded to defend the “legality” of the fund’s controversial investments in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Stoltenberg is the former chief of NATO.

Business operations in occupied West Bank

Since the late 2010s, the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR) has used independent international fact-finding missions to investigate the implications of the Israeli settlements on the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people throughout the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. 

These reports do not cover all companies operating in the occupied territories. However, they do include the major ones that play the most critical roles 

The overwhelming majority of these firms are headquartered in Israel. There are more than 110 such companies. 

Since the first OHCHR report in 2020, some are no longer involved in the listed activities, such as General Mills and its Israeli subsidiary, which likely divested following a campaign to get the company to stop manufacturing its Pillsbury products on stolen Palestinian land. 

In addition to a broad variety of Israeli companies making money on the occupied territories, several international companies operate in these areas, including Airbnb and Expedia (US), Booking.com and Tahal Group (Netherlands), J.C. Bamford Excavators and Opodo (UK).

Still others operate through their parent organisations, including Motorola and Booking Holdings (US), Egis (France), and Altice (Luxembourg), and licensors or franchisors, such as Greenkote (UK).

European financial institutions behind settler expansion

According to Don’t Buy into Occupation (DBIO), a coalition of 25 Palestinian, regional and European organisations, in the early 2020s almost 800 European financial institutions, including banks, asset managers, insurance companies, and pension funds, had financial relationships with more than 50 businesses that were actively involved in Israeli settlements.

All of these companies were involved in activities that raise particular human rights concerns, which constitute the basis for inclusion in the UN database of business enterprises.

The list had almost 40 major European creditors, including BNP Paribas and Barclays, and 50 European investors, including Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank and Allianz.

In addition to Israeli companies, defence contractors, financial institutions and universities that have been targeted in boycott and sanction campaigns for years, recent boycott efforts have increasingly centred on companies that play a critical role in the occupied territories, especially in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Under international law, Israeli settlements, their maintenance and expansion are illegal activities, which give rise to individual criminal liability as war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. 

Israeli, European, and international business enterprises, operating with or providing services to Israeli settlements, play a critical role in the functioning, sustainability and expansion of illegal settlements.

Israelis for boycotts

In the past decade, the Israeli government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in PR struggles against the international boycott movement. 

Though controversial, the latter has attracted some Israeli Jews. Despite different political motivations, they are united by the quest for peace and the view that international pressure is necessary to achieve change in Israel.

In 2012, Avraham Burg, the former chair of the Knesset and interim President of Israel, endorsed a boycott of Israeli settlement products. 

Personally, he boycotted all products produced in the settlements, refusing to cross the Green Line — the pre-1967 borders. Such products were not “made in Israel” and should not be mislabeled that way. Colonising Palestinian lands has made Israel “the last colonial occupier in the Western world”.

Burg’s views were echoed by Ha’aretz journalist Gideon Levy, who also supported boycotting Israel, stressing that it was “the Israeli patriot’s final refuge”. As far he was concerned, “the change won’t come from within”.

International boycotts are painful, but they cost less than human massacres and economic expenditures associated with forever wars. They are neither antisemitic nor anti-Israel. They target the occupation, the settlers and their allies in Israel and elsewhere, and their violence.

Yet, the likelihood that most Israelis would adopt Levy’s view of Israeli boycotts is currently minimal, thanks to the parallel universe created by decades of massive US military aid and money flows by American Jewry to Israel.

If the status quo is untenable and change won’t come from within, then change can only come from without. 

(This is an abridged version of the text first published in Informed Comment on June 11, 2025).