44775.jpeg © 2023 SOPA Images OSLO, NORWAY – 2023/11/17: Activists with Palestinian flags and banners are seen gathered during a rally at the parliament’s headquarters in downtown Oslo. Collectives and pro-Palestinian groups held several actions at the Parliament building in the Norwegian capital where they demanded a ceasefire and a halt to hostilities by Israel, which has carried out an armed raid on the Gaza Strip. (Photo by Jorge Castellanos/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
A global campaign to disinvest from Israel may soon win its biggest convert. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund was ordered last week to consider selling its investments in Israel, which are worth some $2.1bn , after the prime minister expressed concern about possible entanglements in Gaza.
As recently as June, the Norwegian parliament voted down a divestment proposal, but the centre-left government faces a tight election in September, and pressure is growing to show more tangible support for the Palestinian people.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign has grown mostly in trade unions, university campuses and small charitable foundations. Claiming the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund would be a coup – even if, as seems likeliest, it decides only to expand its divestment policy to include more Israeli firms rather than choosing total divestment. The main risk for the Oil Fund may be attracting the attention of a certain pro-Israeli US president bent on punishing those in finance and business that offend him.
Divesting would largely be a symbolic gesture. It would have little impact on divested companies, nor on the financial performance of the wealth fund. Israeli assets account for just 0.1% of its total portfolio, worth nearly $2tn .
The fund lost $39.7bn in the first quarter of 2025, albeit after a record year in 2024. A disappointing second quarter when it reports this week could push management of the fund up the political agenda. Over much of its life, the fund, created in 1990, has grown steadily while generating a lower annual rate of return than other big sovereign funds. Yet it remains popular for turning the money from extracting Norway’s oil reserves into a giant nest egg to be shared over many generations, instead of squandering the revenues in a similar manner to Britain’s North Sea oil.
Photograph by Getty