Following President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Netanyahu made the announcement during his meeting with Trump at the White House on Tuesday. The wartime Israeli leader is on a four-day visit to the United States.
“I wanted to express deep appreciation and admiration, not only of all Israelis, but of the Jewish people,” Netanyahu said while presenting Trump with a copy of the nomination letter sent to the Norwegian Nobel Prize committee.
The nomination is also a recognition of the U.S. president’s diplomatic efforts to establish lasting peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In his first term, Trump initiated the Abraham Accords, which normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. The current Trump administration is working to bring Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Syria into the fold of the Abraham Accords.
“The president has already realized great opportunities. He forged the Abraham Accords; he’s forging peace as we speak with one country and one region after the other,” Netanyahu observed during the White House meeting.
The Associated Press reported Tuesday:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Donald Trump he was nominating the U.S. leader for a Nobel Peace Prize as the two took a victory lap Monday to hail their recent joint strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities as an unmitigated success.The two leaders sat down with their top aides for a dinner in the White House Blue Room to mark the Iran operation and discuss efforts to push forward with a 60-day ceasefire proposal to pause the 21-month conflict in Gaza.“He’s forging peace as we speak, one country and one region after the other,” Netanyahu said as he presented Trump with a nominating letter he said he sent the Nobel committee. (…)“Coming from you in particular, this is very meaningful,” Trump told Netanyahu as the prime minister handed him the nomination letter.
Besides his Middle East diplomacy, in May, Trump played a critical role in ending the military conflict between India and Pakistan, two rival nuclear-armed powers.
In July, Pakistan’s government nominated Trump for the Nobel Prize, acknowledging his role in ending the raging military conflict between the two countries.
“President Trump demonstrated great strategic foresight and stellar statesmanship through robust diplomatic engagement with both Islamabad and New Delhi, which de-escalated a rapidly deteriorating situation,” Pakistan’s government said in its statement endorsing the U.S. president for the prestigious award. “This intervention stands as a testament to his role as a genuine peacemaker.”
Despite progress in the ongoing hostage negotiations, Hamas still refuses to fully accept the Gaza ceasefire framework presented by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff.
Despite showing some ‘flexibility,’ Hamas has yet to accept the key premises of the ceasefire deal, Israeli news reports say. The Gaza-based terror group demands a permanent ceasefire and refuses to release all living hostages and the remains of the murdered ones during the 60-day ceasefire proposed by the Trump administration. The jihadist group still holds 50 Israeli hostages, at least 28 of whom are believed to be dead.
Earlier this month, Israel had reportedly agreed to the terms for a 60-day Gaza truce presented by the White House.
“While Hamas initially demanded a return to Israeli troop positions from before the March 2 collapse of the previous truce, the diplomat said the group had shown some flexibility,” The Times of Israel reported Tuesday. “The core dispute — whether the deal would constitute a temporary pause, as Israel insists, or a permanent end to the war, as Hamas demands — remained unresolved.”
The Israeli news website Ynetnews reported the status of the ongoing negotiations in Doha, Qatar:
A senior Israeli official commented Tuesday morning on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with President Donald Trump and his team, saying, “The two countries are aligned on the hostage deal—we’re hoping for a breakthrough.”Since the last ceasefire ended, 39 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza, including five just last night in Beit Hanoun. Since the start of the war, 888 IDF soldiers have fallen—446 of them during the ground operation in Gaza. While IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir awaits a government decision on the next phase, the Israeli delegation in Washington is urging caution against overconfidence that a deal is imminent.According to the senior official, Netanyahu views Hamas’ reply to the Qatari proposal as essentially a rejection—but not a final one. “The gaps are small enough to begin negotiations,” he said. “We had hoped for a clear yes that would lead to a deal within days, but it looks like this may take longer.”Israeli sources describe the current proposal as “much closer to the Witkoff framework from March, which Hamas previously rejected by insisting on a full end to the war. This offer includes 80%-90% of what we aimed for.”
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