Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official in Gaza, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Istanbul, Turkey, Oct. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Murad Sezer

Hamas worked with a Norwegian government-funded group in an effort to expand its access to European policymakers and “chang[e] the European position” toward the Palestinian terrorist group, newly uncovered internal Hamas documents show. 

The documents, recovered in Gaza and reviewed by the Jerusalem-based watchdog NGO Monitor, describe a May 15, 2021, meeting in Gaza between senior officials from the Norwegian Center for Conflict Resolution, known as NOREF, and Bassem Naim, then head of Hamas’s foreign relations office in the enclave and a member of the group’s political bureau, along with another Hamas foreign affairs official, Abdullah Walid. The meeting took place in the middle of an 11-day round of conflict between Israel and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an allied terrorist group.

According to a July 2021 Hamas memorandum, one of the central subjects was “mediating the relationship between Hamas and the European Union.”

The Hamas account said the group was meeting with “many [international] officials either publicly or secretly,” while Ziad Abu Mustafa, a Gaza-based adviser to NOREF, proposed leveraging the “negative reality in the Palestinian territories in order to push towards changing the European position.” Hamas is on the EU terrorist list, which subjects the Islamist group to financial restrictions and other sanctions. Norway is not part of the European Union. 

During the meeting, the NOREF delegation, represented by deputy director Marte Heian-Engdal and Middle East chief Frida Nome, asked Hamas what channels it already had into Europe and where the Norwegian group could assist. Hamas, meanwhile, described expanding its communications with the international community as a major foreign-policy priority. 

NGO Monitor founder and president Gerald Steinberg called the alleged cooperation with Hamas “immoral,” saying Norwegian organizations were maintaining links that much of Europe had ruled out. 

“While most European countries prohibit links to Hamas, direct or via intermediaries, Norway’s NGOs continue this immoral behavior. This must end immediately,” he told The Algemeiner. 

A second document shows further coordination in 2022.

An Aug. 3, 2022, Palestinian Authority Interior Ministry document described preparations for a NOREF delegation to visit Gaza later that month, after receiving approval from Hamas’s foreign relations apparatus. The planned visit was connected to a project involving about 30 participants from Palestinian factions including Fatah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Hamas authorities subsequently met with Abu Mustafa to arrange the delegation’s entry into Gaza, with the document saying the administrative process would begin after approval from the group’s foreign relations officials. The wider project involved 10 weekly sessions on diplomacy and conflict resolution and a concluding workshop, none of which were publicized. It is unclear from the documents whether the delegation ultimately arrived. 

NOREF describes itself as an independent foundation, but it has extensive formal ties to the Norwegian state. The Norwegian government says the center was established by the Foreign Ministry in 2008 and receives its funding from the ministry. NOREF has also publicly said that its board is appointed by the Foreign Ministry. Its mandate is to carry out informal diplomacy and support Norwegian and international conflict-resolution efforts.

“NOREF, like most of Norway’s NGO industry, is funded by taxpayers and closely linked to state institutions. As such, cooperation with heinous terrorist regimes like Hamas, documented in this report, is fundamentally unacceptable,” Steinberg said. 

NOREF declined to address the specific meetings, citing the confidentiality required for its work. In a statement to The Times of Israel, the organization said it is funded by Norway’s Foreign Ministry but operates as an independent foundation. It said informal dialogue work requires contact with different parties and that “contact does not imply endorsement,” adding that confidentiality prevents it from commenting on specific alleged meetings.

The contacts also fit within a broader Norwegian policy that differs from much of Europe. Norway does not maintain its own national list of terrorist organizations and, according to a 2025 government white paper, decided in 2006 not to join the European Union’s terrorist list because doing so could limit its ability to act as a neutral facilitator and communicate with parties to conflicts. 

That policy has remained in place since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The Norwegian government has repeatedly condemned the assault as terrorism and described Hamas as responsible for it, while continuing to defend dialogue with conflict actors. The same government white paper said Norway had used contacts with both Israel and Hamas after Oct. 7 to work on humanitarian access to Gaza.

“Norway has long chosen to ignore the evidence, refusing to designate Hamas a terror group, unlike European and other democratic governments,” Steinberg said, and called on the country’s “NGO industry” to “cease all coordination with the terror group, private or public, direct or via intermediaries.”

The findings, which were declassified by the Israel Defense Forces, come after years of worsening ties between Israel and Norway. Oslo formally recognized a Palestinian state in May 2024, and Israel later revoked the accreditation of Norwegian diplomats working with the Palestinian Authority.