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"We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law," said Minister Halvorsen. |
OSLO – The Norwegian government decided Thursday, September 3, to ban an Israeli company from business partnership with its state pension fund, one of the world's biggest investors, over its links to the construction of Israel’s separation wall in the occupied West Bank.
"We do not wish to fund companies that so directly contribute to violations of international humanitarian law," Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen said in a statement cited by Agence France Presse (AFP).
On the advice of the Government Pension Fund's ethical council, the government asked the central bank, which manages the pension fund, to divest its shares in the Israeli arms firm Elbit.
Halvorsen said the shares were sold secretly ahead of the announcement.
She made it clear the divestment decision was due to Elbit's involvement in the construction of the separation wall in the occupied West Bank.
The 700km-long Israeli barrier is a mix of electronic fences, concrete walls, trenches, and closed military roads.
When completed, 85 percent of the wall will have been built inside the occupied West Bank, leaving 9.5 percent of the territory and 35,000 Palestinians between the barrier and the Green Line.
For Palestinians, the wall is just another Israeli attempt to eat large segments of the occupied West Bank, splitting families, separating farmers from their land and slicing Al-Quds (occupied east Jerusalem) from the future state.
Complicity
The Ministry of Finance’s council on ethics warned that the fund's investment in Elbit “constitute an unacceptable risk of complicity in serious violations of fundamental ethical norms."
In 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a landmark ruling branding the wall as illegal and asking Israel to compensate affected Palestinians.
For the past two years, Palestinian as well as Israeli anti-occupation groups, aided by Norwegian leftists, have protested Norwegian involvement in companies involved in the wall construction.
The Fund contains nearly all state revenues from the oil industry in Norway, one of the world's largest oil and gas exporters.
It is the biggest single investor in Europe, holding 1.7 percent of the continent's total stock market capitalization and 1.0 percent worldwide.
The fund held stocks and bonds worth 2.38 trillion kroner (277 billion euros, 395 billion dollars) at the end of June.
It reportedly has investments in 41 different Israeli companies.
A research project by the Coalition of Women for Peace called "Who profits from the occupation" found that almost two thirds of those firms are involved in West Bank construction and development.
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