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Following recommendations submitted around the end of June by the Council on Ethics, Norges Bank announced its decision to exclude from the Fund’s investments a number of Israeli Banks and the global enterprise Caterpillar. The Banks were excluded on the basis of the risk that they will provide financial services to Israelis living and settling beyond the pre-1967 armistice lines, once reviled and now transformed into some sort of sacred international boundary, Caterpillar was excluded for failing to do enough to prevent its products from being used " to commit extensive and systematic violations of international humanitarian law" through sales of its products to Israel.
First International Bank of Israel / FIBI Holdings
Bank Hapoalim BM
Bank Leumi Le-Israel BM
Mizrahi Tafahot Bank Ltd
By providing financial services that are a necessary prerequisite for construction activity in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the excluded banks have, in the Council’s assessment, contributed to the maintenance of Israeli settlements. These settlements have been established in violation of international law, and their continued existence constitutes an ongoing breach of international law. The Council considers that there is an unacceptable risk that these banks will continue, through the provision of financial services, to contribute to the maintenance, expansion, and/or establishment of new Israeli settlements, which forms the basis for recommending the company’s exclusion from the GPFG.Links to the Ethics Council's recommendations to exclude the banks here:
First International Bank of Israel / FIBI Holdings: First International Bank Of Israel/ FIBI Holdnings Ltd – Council on Ethics (text of EC Recommendation here)
Bank Hapoalim BM: Bank Hapoalim BM – Council on Ethics
Bank Leumi Le-Israel BM: Bank Leumi Le-Israel BM – Council on Ethics
Mizrahi Tafahot Bank Ltd: Mizrahi Tefahot Bank Ltd – Council on Ethics
Caterpillar, Inc.
Caterpillar Inc was recommended excluded due to an unacceptable risk that the company contributes to serious violations of individuals’ rights in situations of war or conflict. In the Council’s assessment, there is no doubt that Caterpillar’s products are being used to commit extensive and systematic violations of international humanitarian law. The company has also not implemented any measures to prevent such use. As deliveries of the relevant machinery to Israel are now set to resume, the Council considers there to be an unacceptable risk that Caterpillar is contributing to serious violations of individuals’ rights in war or conflict situations, pursuant to section 4(b) of the Fund’s ethical guidelines. A link to the Ethics Council’s recommendation to exclude Caterpillar Inc may be found here: Caterpillar Inc – Council on Ethics.
The decisions are neither exceptional nor unexpected. They continue a longer term project of "de-risking" Norwegian economic activities from Israel specifically, and from companies that may be viewed as facilitating Israel within global financial and other activities. This is bound up in Norwegian policy and in the way in which the Norwegian State apparatus has chosen to continue its mission as a sort of great router and enforcer of international law--wherever it may find and identify such law, and subject to its interpretation and choices for application.
Norway’s official position with respect to the settlements has always been that they constitute a violation of international law. This is rooted in the resolutions passed by the UN Security Council and the opinions published by the ICJ. Norway’s statement to the ICJ in February 2024 reaffirmed this view.28 The Norwegian government further reiterated its position in a press release published in March 2024. In October 2024, the Norwegian government advised Norwegian businesses even more strongly not to engage in business activities that contribute to sustain Israel’s occupation of Palestine. (First International Bank of Israel)
This is an old project for Norway and one designed both to enhance the effect of the extraterritorial projection of Norwegian power (where Norway assumes the position of an agent of international legality--but with Norwegian characteristics (see here, here, and here). One would expect to see a greater attention to the problem of Israel by the organs of the Norwegian State in the coming year, including the Pension Fund Global. It will be most interesting to see how the Israel cases drive the jurisprudence of exclusion elsewhere--but that is too early to tell. It is possible as well that Israel will remain the exception case--the ultimate outlier against which every other form of conduct is to be judged. That is of course out of the hands of the Norwegians who are instruments of something greater (or at least broader) than themselves. Beyond that is politics, policy, and well. . . . the unmentionables of the human condition and their reflexes, some of which are quite ancient. For the latter there is no law or even politics as a driving force, there is something more elemental; law and politics provides the forms for the realization of primal cognitive premises and the phenomenology of its manifestation over a very long temporal arc.
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