However, the two men who could advance his Nobel claim the most — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin — are being adamantly obstructive, declining to end the bloodiest of the world’s current wars, as their own political interests are served by waging them.
Netanyahu and Putin are, in effect, thumbing their noses at the U.S. president. Going their own merry way, they’re no doubt convinced they can either lure him into their way of thinking, or that he’ll continue to be a TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) president.
Back in July, Netanyahu had sought to curry favor with Trump by joining four other national leaders in recommending him for the prize, adding to the stampeding crowd of U.S. lawmakers nominating him. But since then, the Israeli leader hasn’t been playing ball.
He’s persisted with a military offensive in Gaza, accompanied by an Israeli-engineered famine, which has prompted France, Britain and several other countries to announce they’ll formally back Palestinian statehood at the U.N. General Assembly next month.
Still, over the weekend, Trump was optimistically talking up the prospects of striking an agreement, saying Israel had accepted his terms for a hostage deal to end the war. As Israeli officials pointedly highlighted, though, Netanyahu was yet to hold a cabinet meeting to discuss the latest peace framework. Moreover, he was quite unlikely to defy political partners in his far-right governing coalition, who see this as the moment to redeem their dream of a greater Israel that restores the biblical lands of the Jews and are in no mood to end the campaign in Gaza.
And midweek, the Israeli leader appeared to wreck, or at the very least dim, the chances of a U.S.-brokered Gaza peace deal by launching an audacious, albeit unsuccessful, airstrike on Qatar — a U.S. ally that went out of its way to laud Trump when he made an official visit this spring to Doha. During the visit, the country also announced a $1.2 trillion commitment to generate economic exchanges with the U.S.
