Norwegian Foreign Minister, Espen Barth Eide, recently explained that his country suddenly and unilaterally recognized Palestine as a state because Israel disavowed it.
This, according to a conversation he had with the Jerusalem Post.
Are the Norwegian FM and his country so shallow, or so rejectionist, in their inability, or unwillingness, to gauge Israel's strategic assessment of the true character of the Palestinian Arab movement, its territorial ambitions, its divided leadership, and the evidential will of its people to support Hamas, to unilaterally go ahead at such a dangerous time, and gift this troubling anti-Israel jihadi movement a state?
Is Eide unaware of the terms of the Oslo Accords in which Israel reluctantly agreed to surrender territory by dividing it into three blocks, two of which were to gauge the direction that the Palestinian movement was taking? An agreement that allowed Israel to retain Area C until such time as the Arabs proved themselves to be a peaceful and united neighbor of Israel, which they woefully failed to do?
Israel is shockingly aware that Norway has failed its own obligations according to the conditions of the Oslo Accords by helping in the construction of illegal buildings in Area C, and that Norway has assisted in the forced transfer of population by the Palestinian Authority into parts of Area C in defiance of their signed agreement with Israel.
The Norwegian Foreign Minister ignoresthe fact that, according to recent poll taken by the Defense of Democracies NGO in March 2024:
The majority of Palestinian Arabs would still vote Hamas six months into the Hamas-induced war against Israel.
According to polls conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, on May 20, 2024:
81% of Palestinians who watched the Hamas go-pro evidence, still said that Hamas did not commit war crimes.
71% said they approved of the Hamas massacre, rape, and hostage taking of 7/10.
The vast majority 81% want Mahmoud Abbas to resign and more people preferred Hamas to Fatah, or any other party.
Is this what Norway wants? A Hamas governing Palestinian state? Does it care?
In his conversation, the Norwegian Foreign Minister wrongly quoted Palestinian Hamas false casualty figures, figures that had been downgraded by the UN.
As the whole world now knows, in mid-May, before his interview, the UN radically downgraded the Hamas-quoted figures. But, in his mistake, he claimed even more egregiously, based on zero knowledge but quoting Hamas false figures, that the "35,000" killed were "non-Hamas people." How would he know how many of the casualties politically supported Hamas, worked for them, were related to them, or actively sympathized with them, or were even armed terrorists?
And worse, Hamas admits it doesn't even separate civiian from terrorist casualty figures.
He outlandishly claimed that supporting a potential Hamas Palestine was being "pro-Israel."
Pass me that again? I can promise him he is, literally, whistling past the graveyard.
Shallow minded Norwegian politicians like Eide represent the myopic failure of the Accords that carry the name of his Capital.
This failure led to Israelis being murdered on a weekly, if not daily, basis.
Proving this point, Norway presented Yasser Arafat with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
Fact. Arafat killed more Israelis AFTER he received this award from Norway, than he did before.
Norway. It is time for you to remove your myopic rose-tinted glasses and get yourself a pair of clear-lens glasses to enable you to focus on the Middle East as it is in reality, and not what you delude it to be.
Barry Shaw is at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies and author of ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS & Anti-Semitism.’