President Trump didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize he so badly wanted. His claim to the prize was in settling wars between India and Pakistan, Congo and Rwanda, Israel and Iran, Israel and Hamas, Cambodia and Thailand, Egypt and Ethiopia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Serbia and Kosovo.
Hamas will do its best to continue to dominate Gaza. It will not live up to the promises it has made in the peace deal.
Some of those conflicts went back decades and some — including the Israel-Hamas war — may yet not be settled.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been a political tool of the left for decades. We all should remember that then-president Obama won the prize after being in office only a few months. Not that Obama had done anything to deserve it: it was an aspirational award.
Jimmy Carter won it in 2002 for his works on peace — not that they came to anything — and Al Gore won it in 2007 for his climate change nonsense.
Norwegian Nobel Committee Chair Jorgen Frydnes implied that Trump’s qualifications for the prize were meritless. He said, “In the long history of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think this committee has seen many types of campaign[s], media attention.” He didn’t refer directly to Trump or his qualifications, but the implication was clear: Trump didn’t deserve the award.
Nevertheless, the winner was Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Machado — who has been forced to live in hiding for a year. She said of the Venezuelan people’s resistance to socialist dictator Nicholas Maduro, “We are on the threshold of victory and today, more than ever, we count on President Trump, the people of the United States, the peoples of Latin America, and the democratic nations of the world,” she wrote, “as our principal allies to achieve Freedom and democracy.”
So much for the pecksniffs of the Nobel Peace Prize committee.
If the cease-fire holds, and if the terrorists of Hamas abide by the agreement, Trump’s greatest accomplishment (so far) will be the peace between Israel and Hamas.
That deal could propel a major expansion of the Abraham Accords, which were the greatest diplomatic achievement of Trump’s first term. But some Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, demand a Palestinian “state” before they will join the Accords.
Trump’s plan, which has been accepted by Israel and reportedly by Hamas, requires that Hamas release all of the hostages today and tomorrow. About 20 are believed to still be alive and the dead — who were murdered in Hamas’s custody — are to have their bodies returned.
Hamas, of course, doesn’t want to release the hostages or the bodies of the dead because that would end its leverage over Israel. They have reportedly agreed to release all of the hostages, alive and dead, beginning on Sunday night.
Trump has said he wouldn’t put up with delays especially in the hostage release. Whether he will or not remains to be seen.
Hamas’s second big struggle is in the deal’s requirement that it not participate in the future government of the Gaza Strip. It has always insisted that its government of Gaza is non-negotiable and it’s highly unlikely that Hamas will agree to an exclusion from it now.
Hamas “police” — i.e. terrorists — have been reportedly already patrolling parts of Gaza, trying to reassert its governmental powers. Obviously, this is a violation of the peace deal and cannot be tolerated. Which, of course, also disproves Hamas’s intention to disarm, which is one of the key parts of Trump’s deal.
If Hamas disarms, it will have admitted defeat. By its ideology it cannot do so. If it agrees to not participate in a future Gaza government it will also have admitted defeat and for the same reason cannot do so.
Hamas will do its best to continue to dominate Gaza. It will not live up to the promises it has made in the peace deal. So what can we do about it? Not much.
It’s not up to us to deal with Hamas, it is up to Israel. The Israelis, however, are tired of war. They want the hostages to be returned quickly — as if that were possible after two years’ captivity — and they want peace, desperately. Prime Minister Netanyahu knows that dealing with Hamas is like dealing with the old Soviet Union: whatever they promise, they will violate their word. But his nation is divided and exhausted by two years of war.
Israel can deal with Hamas but it will take more time, more patience, and more bloodshed than the nation is probably able to stand.
But Israel has one huge advantage over Hamas: it cannot survive without winning every war. Some Israelis realize this and some do not. It all boils down to which of the two segments has political control for however long the nation lasts. The same goes for us.
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