President Donald Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for historic Middle East deal

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Wednesday, September 09, 2020

President Donald Trump was nominated Wednesday for the Nobel Peace Prize, considered the world's most prestigious prize awarded for the “preservation of peace.”

The nomination for the 2021 prize was made by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of the Norwegian Parliament, who cited the president’s work in helping to broker a historic peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

“Today I have nominated US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize,” Tybring-Gjedde announced on Facebook, highlighting the peace agreement.

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“The agreement can open for lasting peace between several Arab countries and Israel,” he said. “It is now to hope that the Nobel Committee is able to consider what Trump has achieved internationally and that it does not stumble in established prejudice against the US President. In his will, Alfred Nobel set three criteria to qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize. Donald Trump satisfies all three.”

“For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” the Norwegian lawmaker said.

According to the United Nations, Alfred Nobel, the famous chemist and philanthropist after whom the prize was named, was inspired by belief in the community of man as outlined in his will made in 1895. The Peace Prize was to be awarded to the person who had done most for "fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

In a joint statement last month, President Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed said the parties had “agreed to the full normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.”

“After 49 years, Israel and the United Arab Emirates will fully normalize their diplomatic relations. They will exchange embassies and ambassadors, and begin cooperation across the board and on a broad range of areas, including tourism, education, healthcare, trade, and security,” Trump would say later at a press briefing.

“This is a truly historic moment. Not since the Israel-Jordan peace treaty was signed more than 25 years ago has so much progress been made towards peace in the Middle East. By uniting two of America’s closest and most capable partners in the region — something which [they] said could not be done — this deal is a significant step towards building a more peaceful, secure, and prosperous Middle East.”

During his press briefing in August, Trump also pointed out how crucial it was for people of all faiths to come together to fight Islamic extremism.

“This deal will allow much greater access to Muslims from throughout the world to visit the many historic sites in Israel — which the Muslims want to see very badly and have wanted to see for many, many decades — and to peacefully pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is a very special place for them,” Trump said.

“My first trip as President was to Saudi Arabia in May of 2017. In my speech to the assembled leaders of 54 Muslim countries — every single one was by their leader, their number-one leader. It was an amazing — really, an incredible event. A very important event. I made clear that the problems of the Middle East can only be solved when people of all faiths come together to fight Islamic extremism and pursue economic opportunity for people of all faiths.” 

Israel is expected to join the United Arab Emirates at a White House ceremony on Sept. 15 to sign the historic agreement, Fox News reported.

Tybring-Gjedde previously nominated the president for the Nobel Peace Prize along with another Norwegian official in 2018 after Trump’s Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un. Japan’s prime minister reportedly did the same, according to Fox News, but the president did not win.

The Norwegian lawmaker argued that this time around he hopes the Nobel Prize selection committee will look at the facts.

“I’m not a big Trump supporter,” Tybring-Gjedde told Fox News. “The committee should look at the facts and judge him on the facts — not on the way he behaves sometimes. The people who have received the Peace Prize in recent years have done much less than Donald Trump. For example, Barack Obama did nothing.”

In 2009, just nine months into his presidency, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for what the committee called his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

Only three other U.S. presidents have received the award: President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 for “having negotiated peace in the Russo-Japanese war;” President Woodrow Wilson in 1920 for being the “leading architect of the League of Nations;” and President Jimmy Carter in 2002 for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts.”