Norway weighing bill imposing up to 3 years in prison for trade with settlements

Norway is weighing introducing legislation that would both ban trade with all Israeli settlements and provide for penalties of up to three years in prison for violations, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said Monday

“The arguments [in support of the bill] have only become stronger because the situation in the West Bank has become even worse. In addition, so many other countries are now doing the same thing the government has already proposed through this bill,” Eide told state broadcaster NRK in a Norwegian-language interview, prompting a backlash from Israel’s embassy in Oslo.

The trade ban law, which would apply to individuals and companies trading with settlements, according to NRK, follows the United Kingdom’s newly announced wide-ranging sanctions package against Israeli West Bank settlements rolled out last week.

Norway joined Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden in issuing a joint statement shortly after the British announcement expressing their intentions to take or support similar measures.

“Israel has become far too accustomed to being able to intimidate Western countries by saying they were antisemites if they criticized Israel for abuses and violations of international law. Now the [protective cover] that Israel has in many ways enjoyed is gone,” Eide said.

East Jerusalem would also be covered by the legislation, according to NRK.

While dozens of countries have recognized East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory and the capital of a future Palestinian state, Israel formally annexed the area in 1980, 13 years after capturing the territory during the 1967 Six Day War.

Many of the dozens of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem are, in practice, fully integrated neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The UK is undecided as to whether Jewish areas in East Jerusalem would be covered by its sanctions, a British official told reporters last week.

Trade between Norway and the Israeli settlements is not extensive, Eide noted to NRK, saying that “the goods in question include, for example, wine and some agricultural products.”

Israel’s Embassy in Norway decried the potential measure, calling the “proposal to criminalize trade” the “latest example of the Norwegian foreign minister’s obsessive anti-Israel activism on the global stage.”

Norway had already announced in June that it was preparing legislation that would ban all trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank as well as Jewish neighborhoods in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem, but did not make any mention of prison terms for violators.

At the time, Eide said that the government had already drafted a bill to this effect, which was to be subject to consultations for three months, until September 19 — this Saturday.

Norway, which is not a member of the European Union, recognized the state of Palestine in 2024, at the same time as EU members Ireland and Spain did, a move that angered Israel.

Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.