Norway Dumps Israeli Banks - Smotrich's Settlements Pay The Price

Right, so Norway finally put some of its money where its objections were. Its sovereign wealth fund dumped Caterpillar and banking entities linked to Israel’s illegal settlements, deciding that these were investments it could no longer justify. Gee, I wonder what took you so long?Well, Norges Bank announced that on 25 August last year, so why is it back in the news now then? Well, what deserves attention now is why those companies were excluded, because that takes us considerably closer to Netanyahu than the headline about Norwegian investments might suggest.Think about what normally attracts attention when an illegal settlement expands for instance. There’s the minister announcing it, the construction crews arriving, perhaps footage of Palestinians being prevented from reaching their land. The argument centres on what Israel is building and who suffers as a result.Meanwhile, somebody is arranging the finance.A contractor needs money before there’s a completed property to sell. Buyers paying deposits want guarantees. Behind the buildings are financial services helping the development happen, and Norway’s ethics investigators have examined the banks providing them.Suddenly, the bank’s role becomes a little harder to describe as ordinary business. Especially when the government promoting that construction is quite open about what it wants to achieve.Which brings us to Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, standing at a press conference last year to very much promote settlement expansion.He could hardly complain that outsiders were dragging politics into a housing development could he, when he went there first. He was there to explain its political purpose himself, which is an unusually helpful contribution from a man whose idea of diplomacy usually involves finding someone else’s land to start building on.