Norway’s $1.8 trillion wealth fund should divest from all companies that aid Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories, a leader at Norway’s powerful LO trade union told Reuters, intensifying an ongoing divestment campaign.
LO, the biggest confederation of trade unions in Norway, is aligned with the governing Labour Party and often exerts influence on policy beyond traditional workers’ rights issues.
“We want the fund to pull out of the companies that have activities in the occupied Palestinian territories,” Steinar Krogstad, deputy leader at LO, said in an interview. LO’s general policy is that Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, should not invest in companies that breach international law, Krogstad said.
“This question is more on the agenda now ... because of Israel’s policy, attacks and war in Gaza and in the West Bank,” he said, speaking on the margins of the union’s congress, where the Palestinian flag flew alongside those of the United Nations and Norway.
The UN’s highest court last year said Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and settlements there were illegal and should be withdrawn as soon as possible, in a ruling that Tel Aviv rejected as “fundamentally wrong” and one-sided.
LO and 47 other civil society organisations sent Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg a letter, dated April 10, to push for such a move.
The letter asks Stoltenberg to instruct the central bank, which operates the fund, to divest from companies “where there is an unacceptable risk of complicity in violating international law in the occupied Palestinian territories”.
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