Activity

• According to its website, “The Norwegian Refugee Council is an independent humanitarian organisation helping people forced to flee.”
• Operates in 31 countries, with Head Office in Oslo. NRC has been active in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza since 2009 and has offices in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Hebron, and Gaza.
• In Israel, NRC is registered with an “International Humanitarian Visa” authorized by the Ministry of Social Services.

Funding

• According to NRC’s 2022 annual report, governments provided NOK 144.6 million (~$14 million) for programs in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza (see further funding information below).
• Donors include the European Union, United Kingdom, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, France, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, and Luxembourg.

Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA)

• One of NRC’s principle projects in Israel, “Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA),” exploits judicial frameworks to manipulate Israeli policy, bypassing democratic frameworks. NRC’s legal projects are funded mainly by Norway, the European Union (EU), and the United Kingdom (UK).
• In 2023, NRC received $3,552,577 from the UK, for its ICLA project. Implementing partners include Jerusalem Legal Aid Centre (JLAC), Society of St Yves, HaMoked, Yesh Din, Bimkom, Land Research Center, and Ma’an Development Center.
  • The full scope of NRC’S partners is unknown as the United Kingdom refuses to disclose sub-grantees. Additionally, the NRC has lobbied donor governments and the United Nations to be non-transparent regarding its funding sources.
• In 2023-2024, NRC, alongside Society of St Yves and Bimkom, received $300,000 from the OCHA-oPt Humanitarian Fund for ICLA.
• Included in ICLA’s program goals is “supporting the PA both locally and nationally on casework” and works with “other NRC core competences, West Bank Protection Consortium partners, and UN OCHA, as well as with local authorities and village councils.”
• As part of the ICLA program, NRC provides “legal assistance, including paralegal services, accompaniment, follow up or court representation in order to ensure the best possible individual legal protection outcomes” in “collaboration, coordination and partnership both internally within NRC and externally with NGO sector… and with the PA with a view to address some of the barriers to participation of the hard to reach population in ICLA response.”
• Through its Palestinian and Israeli partner NGOs and private lawyers, the ICLA program submits between 500-800 new cases to Israeli courts per year.
• A lawyer affiliated with the NRC program stated that the objective of these cases are an attempt to “try every possible legal measure to disrupt the Israeli judicial system… as many cases as possible are registered and that as many cases as possible are appealed to increase the workload of the courts and the Supreme Court to such an extent that there will be a blockage” (emphasis added).
• According to its 2023 ICLA project response plan, “In 2023, NRC Information, Counselling and Legal aid team (ICLA) will target 17,583 Palestinians identified as affected by conflict-related violations and protection risks such as conflict-related violence, risk of forcible transfer, restrictions on freedom of movement and access to services, including livelihoods and settler violence.”

Other Advocacy in Courts

• Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) leads massive and unprecedented political campaigns exploiting the Israeli legal system. In sharp contrast to NRC’s ostensibly humanitarian agenda, this massive program focuses on some of the most complex and sensitive political issues in the Arab-Israeli context. (Read NGO Monitor’s report “Flooding the Courts: The Norwegian Refugee Council’s European-Funded Proxy War.”)
• In November 2022, NRC welcomed the UN General Assembly resolution calling on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to render an advisory opinion on the “legal status of the occupation,” claiming, “it is the time for the International Court of Justice to revisit its 2004 advisory opinion and to correct the legal errors made then. This requires a pressure from the global civil society on their countries and the General Assembly to finally refer the case to the ICJ for a new advisory opinion that shall recognize the non derogatable right of self-determination for Palestinians not subjective to negotiations.”
  • In November 2022, NRC Senior Humanitarian Law and Policy Consultant Itay Epshtain tweeted “#Israel’s fear that the @CIJ_ICJ Advisory Opinion will liberate #Palestinians from having to wait on it to end occupation on its own terms (or rather, continue to entrench and prolong it) is precisely what we hope the Court would opine. Self-determination is non-negotiable.”
• NRC’s “legal assistance” and “policy change advocacy” are also part of a joint mechanism known as the “West Bank Protection Consortium.” The Consortium argues that “bringing together international agencies from different countries provides the potential to leverage more diverse political and financial support [collaborate] between the INGOs … creates an opportunity to mobilize broader and coordinated political support from diplomats in country and in the capitals of respective INGOs….” Many ICLA cases are “partially funded through the Consortium.”
  • Through the Consortium, NRC works with partner NGOs to “transform policies and practices” and to “ensure effective and timely political interventions by the UN and Third States.” These partners include ACTED, Première Urgence Internationale (PUI) Gruppo di Volontariato Civile (GVC), and Action Against Hunger.
• NRC also leads the “Legal Task Force,” a mechanism of the UN, which coordinates legal responses by 14 Palestinian, Israeli, and international NGOs. An NRC funding appeal notes the close relationship between the UN humanitarian aid framework, the PA, and NRC, explaining that “Legal aid interventions will be coordinated with the PA thru the Legal Task Force” (emphasis added).

Ties to Terrorism

• In May 2018, NRC participated in a legal workshop held by the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) about the “Israeli occupation’s policies for thirty-five farmers from the Middle and South Valley areas.” The workshop was funded by the German foreign office through IFA, and with the cooperation of Medico International.
  • UAWC is identified by Fatah as an official “affiliate” and by USAID-engaged audit as the “agricultural arm” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. (For more information on UAWC’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s report “Union of Agricultural Work Committees Ties to the PFLP Terror Group.”)
  • Samer Arbid, UAWC’s accountant from 2016 until his arrest in 2019, was indicted on 21 counts in Israeli military court. According to Israeli security officials, commanded a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror cell that carried out a bombing against Israeli civilians, murdering 17-year old Rina Shnerb, and injuring her father and brother. According to the Israel Security Agency (Shabak), Arbid prepared and detonated the explosive device.
  • Abdul Razeq Farraj, UAWC Finance and Administration Director, was arrested on October 23, 2019 and indicted on 4 counts in Israeli military court. His alleged crimes include holding a position in an illegal and aiding an attempt to cause death in connection to the August 2019 bombing. Farraj spent six years, from 1985-1991, in “an Israeli prison after being convicted of affiliation with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”
  • In 2017, UAWC’s legal advisors “adopt[ed] 100 farmers’ cases through filing lawsuits in Israeli courts and following up with them, and referring some legal cases to legal and human rights institutions such as JLAC, St. Yves, and NRC.”
• In April 2018, NRC contractor Yasser Murtaja was killed in the violence on the Gaza border. According to news reports, Murtaja was revealed to be a Hamas activist. An April 9 NRC statement notes, “Yasser Murtaja…had agreed to document for NRC the bitter prolonged struggle faced by Palestinian refugees in Gaza. The work was planned to start the day after he was killed.”
• NRC leads the UN-OCHA “Shelter Cluster,” which includes Ma’an Development Center and Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees. The cluster system is a key international lobbying and action mechanism through which the PA advances its nationalist and political agenda and sustains conflict.
  • In May 2018, the Palestinian NGO Ma’an Development Center’s employee Ahmad Abdallah Aladini was killed in the violence on the Gaza border. According to the PFLP, Aladini was a “comrade” who was active against the “Zionist aggression on the Gaza Strip.”
    • In May 2019, Ma’an Director General, Sami Khader attended a memorial event organized by the PFLP that centered on PFLP political bureau member Rabah Muhanna, who, according to information posted by the PFLP, “contributed to the establishment” of several PFLP-affiliated NGOs, including UHWC, UAWC, and Addameer. The hall was decorated with PFLP paraphernalia.
      • At least four current and former NGO officials who attended the event were subsequently indicted on charges of being members of a PFLP terror cell. Some are currently standing trial for their direct involvement in the August 2019 murder of a 17-year-old Israeli girl.
  • Judeh Deeb Ibrahim Jamal, founder of PARC and the General Director of Qatar Charity, was convicted in 2015 for his activity in the Qatar Charity – an illegal organization in Israel due to its ties to Hamas – and for his transferring of funds to the Hamas (on file).
• As part of the UN-OCHA Protection Cluster, NRC co-chairs the Legal Taskforce in both the West Bank and Gaza with the Society of St. Yves. (See more on the Protection Cluster below.)
  • According to Arabic language media, in 2011, Raed Halabi, Society of St. Yves’ “head of the advocacy department,” was convicted and sentenced to 26-months in prison for “organizational activity in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine” (PFLP) – a designated terrorist organization in the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. Electronic Intifada reported that in 2004, Halabi was sentenced to two-years in prison.  In May 2017, Society of St. Yves reported that “the Israeli authorities arrested St. Yves’ advocacy and field officer, Mr. Raed Halabi.”

Anti-Israel Activities

• In October 2023, NRC Secretary General Jan Egeland tweeted, “Numerous reports of hundreds killed at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza. Women & children sought refuge here. Attacks at hospitals are war crimes. If true, the US cannot support Israel’s military campaign. There is no distinction, precaution nor proportionality, as the law requires.” Egeland ignored the videos, images, and intelligence materials demonstrating that an Islamic Jihad rocket had “misfired” (i.e. detonated in Gaza instead of Israel) and hit the hospital parking lot.
• In July 2022, NRC held a workshop with the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee on the “impact of Israeli violations on the economic situation in the old city of Hebron.”
• In May 2021, in the context of the 2021 Gaza conflict, NRC published a press release calling on Israel to “stop this madness: children must be protected. Their homes must not be targets. Schools must not be targets. Spare these children and their families. Stop bombing them now.” NRC ignored that a central aspect of Hamas’ and Islamic Jihad’s strategy is to shield their military operations and terror infrastructure within civilian areas. This includes: firing rockets from within population centers, constructing a vast network of tunnels under these same areas, and hiding munitions in homes and (what would otherwise be) civilian buildings.
• In November 2020, NRC published “Raided and Razed: Attacks on West Bank Education,” alleging “296 attacks against education by Israeli forces or settlers and settlement private security guards” in January 2008 – June 2020. “Attacks on education” is not a legal term; it was invented by NGOs to broaden the UN definition of “attacks on schools and hospitals” and is used in the context of Palestinians with the cynical objective of including Israel on the Secretary-General’s on the list of the world’s worst violators of children’s rights. NRC lists a litany of non-violent incidents under this heading, most related only tangentially at best to schooling and education.(For more information, see NGO Monitor’s analysis, “Norwegian Refugee Council Report on Children – Political Attacks Funded by the EU.”)
• In April 2018, NRC released a statement calling “the deadly force used by the Israeli military against the people of Gaza” during the violence on the Gaza border a “gross violation of their protections under humanitarian and human rights law.” The statement ignored the violent nature of the protests, which included Molotov cocktails, arson, and attempts to breach the border fence with Israel.
• In June 2017, NRC held an event in Geneva titled “The Disintegration of Occupation: Rule of Law in Protracted Belligerent Occupation” featuring Professor Michael Lynk, UN Special Rapporteur “on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.” At the event, Lynk ignored the context of violence and terrorism under which Israel implements security measures and completely fabricated the number of checkpoints that exist, claiming that there are approximately “200-300 checkpoints. Every time a Palestinian tries to leave Area A or B [of the West Bank] to leave they are going through multiple checkpoints.”
• In July 2015, NRC uploaded a video, “End the Nightmares,” promoting Association of International Development Agencies’s (AIDA) #OpenGaza campaign. The propaganda film depicts unprovoked Israeli soldiers attacking smiling Palestinian protesters, including women and children, with gas grenades, rubber bullets, and live ammunition.
• In statements during the 2014 Gaza conflict, NRC declared that “Israel’s military offensive” has resulted in “forced displacement,” “restricting the movement of civilians and the ability of humanitarian actors to carry out even the most basic life-saving activities.” The publications present Israel as the aggressor, omitting the hundreds of indiscriminate Hamas missile and tunnel attacks targeting Israeli population centers.