United States President Donald Trump has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring about a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Fox News reported on Wednesday. Christian Tybring-Gjedde, who is a member of the Parliament of Norway, nominated the American president.
“For his [Trump’s] merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” Tybring-Gjedde told the news channel in an exclusive interview.
In his letter to the Nobel committee, the Norwegian parliamentarian said that Trump’s administration had played a significant role in improving the relations between the UAE and Israel. “As it is expected other Middle Eastern countries will follow in the footsteps of the UAE, this [peace] agreement could be a game changer that will turn the Middle East into a region of cooperation and prosperity,” he said.
Tybring-Gjedde had nominated Trump for the prize in 2018 too after his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, according to Sky News.
Trump had on August 13 announced that Israel and the UAE had reached an agreement to work towards “full normalisation of relations” in exchange for Israel suspending annexation of occupied West Bank territory sought by Palestinians. The agreement came after a three-way phone call Between Trump, Israeli and Emirati leaders. The UAE is the third Arab nation – after Egypt and Jordan – to announce active ties with Israel, according to Al Jazeera.
The deal, however, generated immediate backlash from certain groups in Palestine, who called it a “treacherous stab in the back”. “This agreement does absolutely not serve the Palestinian cause, it rather serves the Zionist narrative,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem had said. “This agreement encourages the occupation [Israel] to continue its denial of the rights of our Palestinian people, and even to continue its crimes against our people.”
In September 2019, Trump had claimed he can get a Nobel Prize for “a lot of things” if it was fairly given. The president said this when a reporter suggested that he could be a contender if he were to resolve the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 in his first year as president. Of the four presidents to have won the honour, he was the first to get it for his vision more than his work.
In February 2019, Trump had claimed that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize for starting dialogue with North Korea.
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