OSLO: Norway said Thursday it had summoned an Israeli embassy official over Israel’s decision to revoke the diplomatic status of Norwegian envoys to the Palestinian Authority.
Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said he was “surprised” by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz’s announcement earlier Thursday.
“A short while ago, I summoned Israel’s representative to Norway and met her at the foreign ministry to protest against this decision,” Barth Eide told journalists.
The Israeli foreign ministry said it was revoking the diplomatic status of “eight Norwegian diplomats.”
Katz cited Norway’s recent recognition of a Palestinian state and its backing for a pending International Criminal Court case implicating Israeli leaders in alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“We have all along expected there may be reactions to the position we have chosen (on the recognition of a Palestinian state), but we are surprised that they chose to do this, and especially right now,” Barth Eide told reporters.
“During my meeting with the Israeli representative I asked for an explanation,” he said, adding that she “was unable to provide one on the spot.”
In a statement issued earlier, Barth Eide had called Israel’s decision an “extreme action” that would “have consequences.”
“The Norwegian government is now evaluating what other measures we will take,” he told reporters.
“Norway is and will always be a friend of Israel and the Israeli people,” Eide said in the statement.
“At the same time, Norway has been clear in our criticism of the occupation (of Palestinian territories), the way in which the war in Gaza has been conducted and the suffering this has inflicted on the Palestinian civilian population,” Eide continued.
Norway summons Israeli envoy over diplomats’ revoked status
https://arab.news/5ctvd
Norway summons Israeli envoy over diplomats’ revoked status
- “A short while ago, I summoned Israel’s representative to Norway and met her at the foreign ministry to protest against this decision,” Barth Eide said
- The Israeli foreign ministry said it was revoking the diplomatic status of “eight Norwegian diplomats”
Algeria Senate demands changes to law criminalizing French rule
- The Senate said Thursday some articles of the text did not fully reflect the official approach set out by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune
- France has called the bill “clearly hostile”
ALGIERS: Algeria’s Senate on Thursday demanded changes to a law criminalizing French colonial rule, including provisions on reparations, nearly a month after parliament passed the legislation.
On December 24, parliament’s lower house unanimously approved the law declaring France’s colonization of Algeria from 1830 to 1962 a crime and demanding an apology and reparations.
But the Senate said Thursday some articles of the text did not fully reflect the official approach set out by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, who had said Algeria did not need financial reparations from France.
This means a joint committee including members of both chambers will now review the disputed provisions before finalizing the text, as the Senate cannot amend laws passed by the lower house.
France has called the bill “clearly hostile,” coming at a time of diplomatic friction with Algeria.
Relations soured in late 2024 when France officially backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, where Algeria backs the pro-independence Polisario Front.
The bill states that France holds “legal responsibility for its colonial past in Algeria and the tragedies it caused.”
It lists the “crimes of French colonization,” including nuclear tests, extrajudicial killings, “physical and psychological torture,” and the “systematic plundering of resources.”
The bill states that “full and fair compensation for all material and moral damages caused by French colonization is an inalienable right of the Algerian state and people.”
However, Tebboune had said in a speech in December 2024 that Algiers was “not tempted by money, neither euros nor dollars.”
“We demand recognition of the crimes committed in the country” by France, he said. “I am not asking for financial compensation.”
Before taking office, French President Emmanuel Macron had acknowledged that his country’s colonization of Algeria was a “crime against humanity,” but Paris has yet to offer Algiers a formal apology.
Algeria says the war with colonial France killed 1.5 million people. French historians put the death toll lower at 500,000, 400,000 of them Algerian.
