In confirming the Israel-Hamas peace deal on Truth Social last night, Donald Trump referenced the seventh Beatitude from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.’ Trump has been called a lot of things, many of them words you won’t find in the Bible, but could his next monicker be Nobel laureate?
Even some of Trump’s critics, among whom I count myself, see a case for awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize
The Gaza war did not begin on his watch and it was not the backdrop to his second term that he wished for. Trump II has been much more aggressively America First than Trump I, which was mostly America First in rhetoric since so much of the president’s agenda was frustrated by both parties in Congress and bipartisan hostility to MAGA from within the administrative state. It’s exceedingly difficult to be America First when there’s a war raging in the Middle East, given the strategic importance of that region for energy, trade routes, and US diplomatic dominance. So Trump resolved that a war that started under Joe Biden would finish under Trump. If this deal holds up, he will have achieved his goal.
Given the loss of life among Israelis and Palestinians, the Auschwitz-style treatment of Jewish hostages starved and forced to dig their own graves, the destruction of Gaza and displacement of its residents, bringing these hostilities to a conclusion was not only politically desirable but morally essential. Yet the hurdles Trump had to clear were considerable.
An intransigent Benjamin Netanyahu was adamant that Israel would not withdraw from Gaza until all its hostages had been liberated from that hellhole. Hamas was uninterested in a US-brokered peace, having enjoyed unprecedented success in shifting European policy sharply in its direction, with its decades-old ‘genocide’ accusation finally embraced by Western elites and one government after another recognising Palestine while sanctioning Israel.
Trump had to get Israel on board all the while his MAGA coalition was entrenched in a war of its own between right-wingers and evangelical Christians in the pro-Israel camp, and MAGA influencers who suddenly, and for reasons we might never know, began echoing the talking points of certain oil-rich Arab and Islamic regimes with lavish foreign lobbying budgets.
Trump also had to balance competing regional interests (Turkey, Egypt, the Gulf states) and tip-toe along a diplomatic tightrope after one US ally (Israel) bombed another (Qatar) where the US has billions invested in a military base.
Five years ago, I raised some eyebrows among my fellow liberals by asking whether Trump should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in brokering normalisation between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab and Muslim nations. He did so, I pointed out, in spite of all the smart people decrying his every action as dumb and bound to fail and likely to plunge the world into catastrophe. His reputation for deal-making was, we were assured, bogus and even if it wasn’t diplomatic agreements worked very differently to business pacts. Trump’s arrogance and abrasiveness, we were told, would make negotiations impossible. Turns out they were wrong about that, too.
Trump has not only shown that he can make deals on the international stage, he’s rewritten the rules of diplomacy by sheer force of his personality – and his quick temper. By being arrogant and abrasive – by being, quite frankly, a bully – he has forced even the most inflexible interlocutors to soften their positions. Teddy Roosevelt advised presidents to ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’. Trump lets the stick do all the talking. Like it or not, it seems to work.
There are still unanswered questions about the terms of this deal, not least what happens when, as is inevitable, Hamas or another Iran proxy tramples all over it, either by a succession of small but significant infractions or by a fresh wave of terror attacks against Israel. But for now there is, for the first time in two years, real hope that this latest episode of Middle Easterners blowing each other to Kingdom come has drawn to a close.
If it has, even some of Trump’s critics, among whom I count myself, will see a case for awarding him the Peace Prize, perhaps jointly with Netanyahu and Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar. After all, if this really was a genocide, a mass starvation, an ethnic cleansing, and all the other lies and distortions that came from the anti-Israel lobby, surely you would want to see the man responsible for stopping it acknowledged in some way.
In truth, though, the imprimatur Trump should be seeking for his deal is not that of Norwegian eggheads but of plummeting death tolls, an extended period of quiet, and the reconstruction of Gaza. Not ‘peace’ as an ideal but as an on-the-ground reality that saves lives and improves them. So what if he got there by unorthodox means and in a manner that Debrett’s Etiquette and Modern Manners, to say nothing of the Council on Foreign Relations, would not approve of? Peace is peace.
Blessed are the dealmakers, for whatever they might be called, they get the job done.
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