Families of hostages held in Gaza urged the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Monday to give the Nobel Peace Prize to United States President Donald Trump this month for his efforts to secure the release of their loved ones.
As Gaza ceasefire talks began in Egypt based on Trump’s proposal, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents the majority of hostages’ relatives in Israel, said in a statement that it sent a letter to the committee calling on it to name Trump as the laureate this Friday.
“At this very moment, President Trump’s comprehensive plan to release all remaining hostages and finally end this terrible war is on the table. For the first time in months, we are hopeful that our nightmare will finally be over,” the Forum wrote. “We are confident that he will not rest until the last hostage is brought home, the war has ended, and peace and prosperity are restored to the people of the Middle East.”
“From the moment of his inauguration, [Trump] brought us light through our darkest times,” the Forum said, expressing gratitude for the dozens of living and dead hostages returned through the US-brokered ceasefire between January and March.
“In this past year, no leader or organization has contributed more to peace around the world than President Trump. While many have spoken eloquently about peace, he has achieved it,” added the Forum, concluding: “We strongly urge you to award President Trump the Nobel Peace Prize because he has vowed he will not rest and will not stop until every last hostage is back home.”
The letter does not constitute a nomination of Trump, since the Forum is not qualified to submit nominees to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Eligible nominators include members of national governments, university professors, and past peace prize winners.
In July, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nominated Trump for the award, citing the president’s role in ending the previous month’s 12-day Israel-Iran war and in brokering the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and four Arab nations.
However, that nomination would only be valid for the 2026 award; the period for submitting 2025 award nominees ended on January 31.
According to Kobby Barda, an expert on US-Israeli relations, Israeli-American legal scholar Anat Alon-Beck, who teaches at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, already nominated Trump in a January 28 letter to the Nobel Prize committee.
Since 2018, Trump has been nominated for the prestigious prize — which he has repeatedly asserted that he deserves — by several individuals in the United States and politicians abroad. Some observers have suggested that Trump is moving swiftly to begin implementing his Gaza ceasefire-hostage proposal in part to strengthen his chances ahead of this year’s award.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted during the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza. They include the bodies of at least 26 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive, and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Among the bodies held by Hamas is an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.