TPC Staff
The Palestine Chronicle / September 4, 2024
The fund “held investments worth 16 billion crowns ($1.41 billion) in Israel as of June 30, across 77 companies, according to fund data, including companies involved in real estate, banks, energy and telecommunications.”
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund may have to divest shares of companies that violate the fund watchdog’s new interpretation of ethics standards for businesses complicit in Israel’s military operations in occupied Palestine, according to a Reuters report.
In a letter from the Council on Ethics to the country’s finance ministry, the watchdog “summarizes the recently expanded definition of unethical corporate behavior,” the report said.
It pointed out that since Israel’s genocidal assault began on Gaza last October, the watchdog has been “investigating whether more companies fall outside its permitted investment guidelines.”
“The Council on Ethics believes the ethical guidelines provide a basis for excluding a few more companies from the Government Pension Fund Global in addition to those already excluded,” the watchdog wrote.
Reuters said the fund “held investments worth 16 billion crowns ($1.41 billion) in Israel as of June 30, across 77 companies, according to fund data, including companies involved in real estate, banks, energy and telecommunications.”
American companies
Among the companies possibly identified are RTX Corp, General Electric and General Dynamics, which according to non-governmental organizations, produce weapons used by Israel in Gaza, said the report.
The Council was focusing on weapon producers in countries not participating in the Arms Trade Treaty, a 2014 agreement on conventional weapons trade.”
The letter said that this “mainly concerns American companies,” but that there “are very few relevant companies remaining in the fund.” This, said the Reuters report, was “partly because many U.S. defense manufacturers were already barred for producing nuclear weapons or cluster munitions.”
ICJ opinion
The updated ethics definition, set by Norway’s parliament, was partly influenced by the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion in July deeming Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory as unlawful.
The letter pointed out that the World Court took positions on “several new facts and legal issues” that could make “companies with a less direct connection to violations of norms” in breach of the ethics rules, reported Reuters.
It further noted that the new definition was based on the Court’s finding that “the occupation itself, Israel’s settlement policy and the way Israel uses the natural resources in the areas are in conflict with international law.”
Under its prior policy, the report said the fund was divested from nine companies operating in the occupied West Bank.
The companies were linked to the building of roads and homes in illegal Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank “and providing surveillance systems for an Israeli wall” around the occupied territory.
‘On notice to change’
Reuters said that the Council makes recommendations to the board of the central bank, which operates the fund, adding that “the bank often follows the watchdog’s advice to exclude firms, but not always.”
The bank, it said, “can also put a company on notice to change its behavior or ask the fund’s management to engage with it directly.”
In May, Norway, along with Ireland and Spain, announced its official recognition of the State of Palestine.
Last month, Israel revoked the accreditation of eight Norwegian diplomats who have been dealing with the Palestinian Authority.
A statement by the Foreign Ministry on Thursday said that the decision was in response to “a flurry of recent anti-Israel and unilateral steps taken (by) the government of Norway.” This includes recognizing a Palestinian state and recent “severe comments by senior Norwegian officials,” the Times of Israel reported.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 40,861 Palestinians have been killed, and 94,398 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
