The Norwegian government-appointed foundation NOREF Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution held a secret meeting with Hamas in Gaza in May 2021 with the aim of improving relations between the terrorist organisation and the EU, according to internal Hamas documents leaked to the Times of Israel.
At the meeting, NOREF was represented by Marte Heian-Engdal and Frida Nome, while Bassem Naim and Abdullah Walid represented Hamas, the Israeli newspaper writes.
At the top of the agenda for the meeting, according to a July 2021 Hamas report to the terrorist group’s politburo, was ‘mediating the relationship between Hamas and the European Union’ (Norway is not a member of the EU).
Official Palestinian documents showed that communication between NOREF and Hamas continued throughout the following year.
The Hamas documents, which were found during the war in Gaza and released by the IDF, were shown to The Times of Israel by the pro-Israel watchdog NGO Monitor.
According to the leaked documents, Naim told the Norwegians that Hamas wanted ‘open channels of communication with the international community’, and that there was also secret contact with other European countries.
The terrorist movement’s desire fits hand in glove with official Norwegian ambitions to be an important international actor. Naim is also full of praise for Norway:
He also claimed that Hamas’s relationship with Norway ‘is a great and historic relationship, and that there is mutual respect between the two peoples.’
Naim pointed out that the only European official who had met then Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh after Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006 was Norway’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Raymond Johansen, who met the Hamas leader in 2007.
Gaza is also represented in NOREF:
Ziad Abu Mustafa, a NOREF adviser from Gaza, proposed using ‘the negative reality in the Palestinian territories to push for changing the European position.’
The secret meeting took place while Hamas was bombing Israel:
The meeting with NOREF took place during the 11-day conflict in 2021 between Israel and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. At the time, the two terrorist groups fired more than 4,000 rockets and mortar shells at Israel.
NOREF does not deny that the meeting took place, but responds to the Times of Israel in general terms.
‘NOREF is an independent foundation funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with a mandate to support conflict resolution and facilitate informal dialogue initiatives,’ it states.
‘Dialogue work entails contact with various actors in the conflict, and such contact does not imply support for any of the actors or their positions,’ NOREF continued. ‘As dialogue work often depends on confidentiality, NOREF does not comment on specific alleged meetings, documents or contacts.’
Israel, by contrast, regards Norway as a de facto ally of the Palestinians.
According to other Palestinian documents, another NOREF visit to Gaza was planned for 2022, the Times of Israel writes.
Marte Heian-Engdal is married to Olav Heian-Engdal, Chief of the Royal Court at the Royal Palace in Oslo. According to a revelation by Dagbladet in 2023, it was he who received the correspondence from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which the Royal House was instructed not to offer condolences to Israel following Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. Both were recruited together at the time to work for the Palestine Committee in Lebanon.
Jonas Gahr Støre had secret contact with Hamas in 2007, which was revealed by journalist Pål T. Jørgensen on TV 2 in 2011.