Washington: Republican lawmaker Claudia Tenney has nominated former US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing his role in facilitating the "historic" Abraham Accords, Fox News reported. This marks the fourth time Trump has been nominated for the Abraham Accords peace agreement, but did not receive the award during his presidency.
The Abraham Accords refer to the bilateral agreements signifying the normalisation of ties between Israel and Arab countries, two bitter enemies in the past. It acknowledges the peace accord between Israel and Egypt in 1978 and the Oslo peace accords in 1994. So far, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Morocco and Sudan have normalised relations with Israel.
"Donald Trump was instrumental in facilitating the first new peace agreements in the Middle East in almost 30 years. For decades, bureaucrats, foreign policy 'professionals', and international organizations insisted that additional Middle East peace agreements were impossible without a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Trump proved that to be false," Tenney told Fox News in a statement, adding that there has been no recognition for Trump's role in brokering an agreement between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
"The valiant efforts by President Trump in creating the Abraham Accords were unprecedented and continue to go unrecognized by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, underscoring the need for his nomination today. Now more than ever, when Joe Biden’s weak leadership on the international stage is threatening our country’s safety and security, we must recognize Trump for his strong leadership and his efforts to achieve world peace," she added.
The statement came after three American soldiers were killed in Jordan by a drone strike allegedly by Iran-backed militia, threatening a major escalation in the already precarious situation in the Middle East, fuelled by the Israel-Hamas war that has killed 26,000 people in Gaza. President Joe Biden's administration has been criticised for its handling of the war and is under pressure to respond to Iran-aligned groups.
Previous nominations
The Abraham Accords have been criticised for not bringing a solution to the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict, but Trump has been nominated several times for bringing the accords. “I think I’ll get a Nobel prize for a lot of things if they gave it out fairly, which they don’t,” Trump told reporters in 2019.
Trump was nominated for the coveted prize by far-right Norwegian parliamentarian Christian Tybring-Gjedde, who applauded his efforts toward resolving protracted conflicts worldwide. A few months later, Swedish MP Laura Huhtasaari called for nominating Trump for the 2021 prize "in recognition of his endeavors to end the era of endless wars, construct peace by encouraging conflicting parties for dialogue and negotiations, as well as underpin internal cohesion and stability of his country."
Trump then received a third nomination from a group of Australian lawmakers in September 2020. "What he has done with the Trump Doctrine is that he has decided he would no longer have America involved in endless wars, wars which achieve nothing but the killing of thousands of young Americans and enormous debts imposed on America," Australian legal scholar David Flint told Sky News Australia at the time.
In 2018, a group of 18 Republicans in the US House of Representatives formally nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring about a reconciliation between North Korea and South Korea. If he had received the award, he would have been the fifth US president to win, following Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1920, Jimmy Carter in 2002 and Barack Obama in 2009.
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