I have been trying to figure out just how much of the credit for the recent Israel-Hamas ceasefire/hostage deal is actually due to Donald Trump. It is being described as the "Trump ceasefire" in most circles, and obviously he is a central figure in it. But it's not entirely clear to me that it would not have happened without him and his bull-in-a-china-shop bluster. Clearly, it required the attention of the President of the United States. But Trump specifically? I don't know.
The best article I can find is one in The Guardian, which describes Trump as a "juggernaut" necessary to bludgeon the deal through, but which also attempts to explain some of the nuances behind his role.
Other than stroking his delicate ego, the first thing that was needed was to focus Trump's attention to where it could actually do some good, and to steer him away from some of his wilder ideas like US ownership of the Gaza Strip and its development into the "Riviera of the Middle East", for example. Instrumental in all this is the relatively unsung work of Egypt, UAE and Qatar, and even the injection of ex-British PM Tony Blair and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner into the mix.
Between them, they managed to focus Trump on the real issues. Several missteps by Netanyahu that pissed Trump off - like Israel's ill-advised air strike on US ally Qatar - also helped him to see things from a slightly less pro-Israel perspective.
Either way, this is not Nobel Peace Prize territory, even if the ceasefire holds - and that's a big if, there are still many sticking points remaining, even if the broad strokes are publicly agreed. A tremendous amount of detail work remains to be done, and Trump is very much a broad strokes kind of guy, uninterested in the nitty-gritty of policy implementation.
It's hard to see the venerable Nobel committee handing the prize to a man who can launch military strikes against the likes of Iran, Yemen, Venezuela at the drop of a hat, and who can happily send American troops into his own country's cities in order to make a make an example of them and to score petty party political points. Surely, motives are important, and Trump's motives in the Middle East are far from altruistic. And does anyone really think that Trump came up with a complex 20-point plan all on his ownsome?
Anyway, as it happens, this year's shortlist for the Nobel Peace Prize was finalized way back in January, long before Trump involved himself in anything, and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has already been awarded this year's prize. But Trump will still be pissed off, and Norway has been on high alert as a result. How ridiculous international politics has become.
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