Itamar Eichner
Ynet News, Feb. 25, 2024
“Norway is the only country in Europe that does not define Hamas as a terrorist organization.”
After a long period during which Ireland was considered the most hostile country toward Israel in Europe, it seems that Norway has managed to take its place and win the dubious title. Israel and Norway are currently in the most acute diplomatic crisis in the history of their relations.
At the center of the crisis between the countries is Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, who has made a series of very harsh statements against Israel. At the international summit on the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians in Cairo, two weeks after the outbreak of the war in Gaza, Eide was the only Western foreign minister who condemned Israel and did not call for the release of the hostages. Eide compared Israel to Russia on three occasions and said that Europe loses credibility when it does not condemn Israel for the same things for which it condemned Russia.
When the hearings of case filed by South Africa accusing Israel began at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Norway expressed support for the lawsuit. Eide was asked by an opposition member what he thought of the lawsuit and said that Israel may not be committing genocide in Gaza, but it is committing war crimes or crimes against humanity. The minister also clarified that it is good for the court to find out if genocide is indeed taking place in Gaza. Even in the additional proceedings being conducted at the International Court of Justice in The Hague regarding the legality of Israel’s policies and practices in the West Bank, Norway spoke strongly against Israel.
Eide boasted that Norway does not sell arms to Israel and called on countries that do export arms to Israel to stop doing so, because they could be indirectly involved in a potential genocide. He said recently in an interview with the NRK network podcast that the Israeli government does not understand what is in its own best interest.
On Sunday, Eide claimed in an interview with the VG tabloid newspaper that there is a deterioration in relations between Israel and the U.S. “I hear from all channels that America’s patience with Netanyahu has dropped to less than 1%. It’s a very bad atmosphere,” he said.
Israel’s ambassador to Norway, Avi Nir-Feldklein, was asked by the newspaper “daily newspaper Dagbladet to address Eide’s claims. “These are questions you should ask the U.S., whether they think it is okay for internal discussions about a third party to be revealed publicly.”
In 2010, in one of the WikiLeaks cables, a statement by the U.S. ambassador to Norway was revealed, in which he said that Eida, who also served as foreign minister at the time, seemed to prefer his own interests over the interests of Norway.
Despite the problematic behavior of the Norwegian foreign minister, for some reason Israel decided to give a prize to Norway and chose it to be the country to hold hundreds of millions of shekels in frozen tax revenues that Israel holds from Palestinian imports for Gaza. This is part of an agreement between Israel and the U.S after Israel’s refusal to transfer the funds to Gaza for fear it will fall into the hands of Hamas.
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