Hamas collaborated with a Norwegian state-funded organization to manipulate European foreign policy and mitigate Hamas’s isolation, documents from the terrorist group reveal.
The revelations of Norway’s support for Hamas are the latest chapter in its ongoing anti-Israel interventions and support for groups like the Taliban, contrasting with its former status as a facilitator in international peacemaking, mediation, and reconciliation.
Declassified Hamas documents recovered in Gaza reveal that the Norwegian Centre for Conflict Resolution (NOREF), established by Norway’s government in 2008, engaged in “direct, systematic coordination with high-ranking Hamas officials,” NGO Monitor reported on August 16, 2026.
The revelations of Norway’s support for Hamas are the latest chapter in its ongoing anti-Israel interventions and support for groups like the Taliban.
The documents indicate that Hamas used NOREF as a channel to leverage the “negative reality in the Palestinian territories” to “push towards changing the European position” on the Islamist organization. The document shows Hamas maintaining extensive contacts with international actors and meeting with “many [international] officials either publicly or secretly.”
Top Hamas officials, including Basem Naim, head of Hamas’s Foreign Relations Office in Gaza, and Hamas foreign affairs official Abdullah Walid, and a senior high-level NOREF delegation planned some of this lobbying at a May 15, 2021, meeting. The NOREF delegation asked Hamas’s representatives how it could influence European leaders to benefit Hamas, with questions like: “What are the channels of communication that are currently working on dialogue between the movement [Hamas] and the European Union? How are we able to contribute to this dialogue without obstructing these efforts?”
A NOREF representative praised Hamas’s cooperation on a joint initiative, stating, “We have the youth project and we value your effort with us in facilitating some of the meetings and communications on this matter.”
A second Palestinian Authority Interior Ministry document from August 2022 establishes further collusion between NOREF and Hamas. The document outlines preparations for a NOREF visit to Gaza linked to a project involving 30 participants from Palestinian factions including Hamas, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The project also scheduled 10 weekly sessions on diplomacy and conflict resolution, along with a concluding workshop. “All the programs and activities that the aforementioned is carrying out are not publicized in the media,” the document noted.
“NOREF’s secret meetings with Hamas officials and its willingness to help the terror group ‘change the European position’ on Hamas sanctions are part of a broader, disturbing pattern of destructive meddling in the Arab-Israeli conflict,” an NGO Monitor spokesman said. “Norway has long whitewashed engagement with terrorists like Hamas as ‘peacebuilding,’ and channeled huge amounts of money toward compromised international NGOs in Hamas-controlled Gaza.”
“What is sorely needed is a Norwegian paradigm shift: an admission that Hamas can never be a partner for peace, that terror organizations must be sanctioned on moral and international legal grounds, and that Norwegians deserve better than having their taxpayer money funneled toward actors aligned with terror groups like Hamas in Gaza,” the spokesman added.
In August 2024, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized Oslo for refusing “to recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization, exactly ten months after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” supporting the International Criminal Court’s “baseless case” against Israel, and recognizing a Palestinian state.
Norway was the first European country to endorse the International Criminal Court’s case against Israel. Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said Norway would arrest Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant if they traveled to Norway. Norway also joined South Africa in filing a submission with the International Criminal Court against Israel.
Israel condemned the Norwegian government’s policy towards Israel since the Hamas attacks as “extreme, one-sided, and anti-Israel,” asserting that the “extremist policy of the Norwegian government prevents it from having the capability to continue to be a partner in discussions or activities with Israel on the Palestinian issue.”
“Norway has abandoned its longstanding neutrality and mediation efforts between Israel and the Palestinians, and instead joined Israel’s harshest critics.”
In 2022, human rights activists, particularly Afghans, criticized Norwegian authorities for legitimizing the Taliban by hosting a summit with the extremist group in Oslo. Norway has repeatedly invited Taliban leaders on secret trips since 2005, pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported.
Manizha Bakhtari, a former ambassador of Afghanistan to Norway, said that “the Norwegian government repeatedly invited Taliban leaders to visit that country secretly and to meet with Norwegian politicians,” holding the meeting “in secret locations.”
While the state subsidizes the Church of Norway through direct financial support and pays the salaries of its minister, Norway’s government remains silent on the jihadi massacres of Christians in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
“Norway has abandoned its longstanding neutrality and mediation efforts between Israel and the Palestinians, and instead joined Israel’s harshest critics,” Elliott Abrams, author of Realism and Democracy: American Foreign Policy after the Arab Spring, notes.
“When it comes to Israel, Norway has switched sides,” Abrams writes. In the aftermath of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian attacks, “Norway has abandoned ‘conflict resolution’ and made common cause with Israel’s enemies.”
