A foundation established, funded and appointed by the Norwegian government held undisclosed meetings with senior Hamas officials in Gaza five years ago to examine ways to improve ties between the terror group and the European Union, according to internal Hamas documents seen by The Times of Israel.

Top officials from the Norwegian Center for Conflict Resolution, or NOREF, met on May 15, 2021, with Bassem Naim, head of Hamas’s Foreign Relations office in Gaza, and Abdullah Walid, from the same department. Naim is also a member of Hamas’s decision-making political bureau.

At the top of the agenda at the meeting, according to a July 2021 Hamas report to the terror group’s politburo, was “mediating the relationship between Hamas and the European Union” (Norway is not a member of the EU).

NOREF was represented at the meeting by its deputy head Marte Heian-Engdal and Middle East Department chief Frida Nome.

Official Palestinian documents showed that communications between NOREF and Hamas continued over the following year.

The Hamas documents, found during the war in Gaza and declassified by the IDF, were shown to The Times of Israel by the pro-Israel watchdog NGO Monitor.

According to the Hamas summary of the May 2021 meeting, Naim told his Norwegian guests that one of Hamas’s “most important missions” was “opening channels of communication with the international community.”

Nome asked, according to the Hamas report, what the existing channels of communication were between the terror group and the EU, and asked how NOREF could contribute to the dialogue.

Naim said that “there are several European countries that have communications with Hamas, and they are trying to keep these communications secret and undeclared.”

He also asserted that Hamas’s relationship with Norway “is a great and historic one, and there is mutual respect between the two peoples.”

Naim noted that the only European official who had met with then-Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh after Hamas prevailed in 2006 Palestinian elections was Norway’s deputy foreign minister Raymond Johansen, who met the Hamas........

© The Times of Israel