The controversial United Nations aid agency serving Palestinians in Gaza has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize — even as some of its staffers are accused of killing and kidnapping Israelis on Oct. 7.
Norwegian Labor MP Asmund Aukrust told a local newspaper he nominated the United Nations Relief and Works Agency “for its long-term work to provide vital support to Palestine and the region in general.
“This work has been crucial for over 70 years and even more vital in the last three months,” said Auskrust, who also serves as the vice chairman of the Norwegian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
The nomination for the iconic award comes as Norwegian officials are trying to persuade Western allies to reconsider their decision to cut funding to the agency over an Israeli dossier that described how a dozen UNRWA employees — including several teachers — participated in the Hamas massacre in October, including some staffers who kidnapped and killed people.
About 1,200 UNRWA workers are known to have links to the terrorist organization, the dossier claimed.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called the dossier’s findings “highly, highly credible.”
The US was the first to cut funding to the UNRWA after the accusations surfaced last week.
“The United States is extremely troubled by the allegations that 12 UNRWA employees may have been involved in the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel,” the State Department said in a statement.
Other nations including Canada, Italy, Australia, the United Kingdom and Finland soon followed suit.
But advocates for the group say it provides necessary aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip, many of whom are facing hunger and disease as the war continues to rage.
The United Nations has said that a suspension of aid by major donors could jeopardize UNRWA’s work within weeks, and Martin Griffiths, the top UN humanitarian official, told the international body’s Security Council on Wednesday that its operations in Gaza are “completely dependant on UNRWA being adequately funded and operational.”
He said that withholding funding for the “alleged actions of a few individuals is a matter of extraordinarily disproportion.”
Griffiths’ remarks were echoed by Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, who said the approach “amounts, in a sense, to a collective punishment of millions of Palestinians,” according to the New York Times.
But support for the aid agency among lawmakers in the United States remains low, with Congress considering several measures to suspend a total of more than $1 billion in funding for the group.
On Thursday, a coalition of 26 state attorneys general sent a letter to Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle calling for the federal government to permanently halt all American financial aid to UNRWA.
“It is time for Congress to stop funding this organization that rapes, murders and kidnaps innocents — and that has shown it has no willingness, desire or capacity to stick to humanitarian aid and away from supporting antisemitism and terrorism,” the group wrote in the letter, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
“There is no reason to fund organizations that support terrorist operations,” the statement said. “It is abundantly clear, and has been for some time, that UNRWA does just that.”
Since the Palestinian terror group Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007, UNRWA leaders trying to enforce a sense of neutrality in the conflict have faced threats and attacks, the Wall Street Journal reported.
A onetime official who oversaw the previous firing of UNRWA employees with suspected links to Hamas and the removal of weapons from schools received a box full of grenades, prompting him to leave the area in 2015.
The year before he left, weapons were found at three UNRWA-run schools, and some had gone missing, according to the Journal.
It is also believed that several of the UNRWA schools are hiding tunnels where Hamas officials may be keeping hostages.
The UN is now investigating reports that UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’ brutal invasion of Israel and has fired most the 12 who were accused.
Two of the staffers named in the Israeli dossier have been killed in the war.
An investigation into the claims may take up to four weeks, according to the Times.
With Post wires
