An Irish idea for Nobel peace in the Middle East

Laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize are entitled to nominate new ones for the committee’s consideration. The only living British Nobel Peace Prize winner is Lord Trimble, the former first minister of Northern Ireland. Yesterday, he nominated the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed (“MBZ”), for next year’s prize. This follows the recent signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (led by MBZ). These “normalise” relations between the two sides.

With John Hume from the other side of the sectarian divide, David Trimble won the award in 1998 for his part in achieving the Good Friday Agreement of that year. His history is relevant. As he puts it in his citation, “I know from my own experience how dangerous, damaging and corrosive are decades of violent ill will between close neighbours.” He thinks the accords can break the logjam.

There is another similarity. In the Northern Ireland conflict, the Ulster Unionists, whom Trimble led, were mistakenly regarded by most of the wider world as the main problem. Support for Irish nationalism was the default position of most diplomatic and media movers and shakers. This often made the situation worse. In their eyes, orange meant “bigoted”; green was romantic. Mr Netanyahu and his Likud Party are the Trimble/unionist equivalents in the Middle East – widely reviled for intransigence, yet actually far more moderate than the other side, parts of which are deeply compromised by terrorism.

The readiness of the Crown Prince and his allies to move came from his recognition that Israel’s tough talk is not a way of refusing peace, but of achieving it on tolerable terms. They were also fed up with the way the Palestinian grievance is artificially kept centre-stage in all discussions of the region’s future. Might not other things matter more, such as the spread of prosperity and the defeat of Iran’s nuclear ambitions?

The shift by these small actors on the Arab side is, even as it stands, the biggest Middle-east peace move this century. But it could be part of something bigger. At the weekend, Mr Netanyahu flew to Saudi Arabia for a secret meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Relations between these former arch-enemies have now become quite close. Fear of Iran has made them so.

Lord Trimble’s nomination is well chosen, but may not prevail. The Abraham Accords could not have been reached without the backing of President Donald Trump. He has been separately nominated for the Nobel, but one imagines that the prize committee mentally associates him with the cudgel, not the olive branch. It probably feels similar doubts about Mr Netanyahu, and would prefer to play safe and accept Joe Biden’s more conventional approach to IsraelPalestine.

If so, it will be a pity. Peace comes best not from much-signalled virtue, but from hard-headed leaders ready to grasp a practical solution when they can find one.

In September, a young filmmaker friend of our family, Jessica Kelly, married the talented Karim Ennarah, a leading figure in the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Last week, while Jessica was in London, Karim was invited by ambassadors of 13 Western countries – including France, Germany and Canada – to meet and talk about the current, dire state of human rights in Egypt. The British ambassador’s number two was present.

As if to prove Karim’s point, the Egyptian authorities promptly violated his personal rights. After the meeting they threw him into a Cairo prison. They then detained the leader of his organisation, which they have decided to regard (without known justification) as a “terrorist group”. Karim is expected to appear in court shortly.

Unfortunately, the unjust arrest of idealistic young men by a repressive regime is hardly a new event. I might not have noticed it if I had not known Jessica. But it is a strange world if an acknowledged meeting with the ambassadors of free countries is seen as a crime committed by the person invited. General Sisi’s regime uses brutal methods, but it has common interests with Western powers in keeping the Islamist rage of the Muslim Brotherhood at bay. Why does it want to insult the representatives of those interests?

My column on Saturday wondered whether I should install air-source heat pumps as extolled by Boris Johnson’s Ten Point Plan for a “Green Industrial Revolution”. Now I have received the following from a dissatisfied owner in South London. I “MUST NOT” get one, she says. “We have two massive ones stuck on the wall outside, as mandated by (Labour) Merton Council when this house was renovated, and they have ruined our lives, or at least kept us cold, unbathed and argumentative throughout the past 10 winters. Not to mention huge electricity bills (unexplained) and expensive visits from ‘expert’ heating engineers from all over Europe as nobody round here has a clue how they work.” I thought I should pass this on to readers.

I add a message from a friend in Norfolk. He urges me not to change my boiler: “Modern boilers have a plus-or-minus 10-year planned obsolescence.” At the nearby almshouse which he helps look after, the heating engineer recommended a new boiler 12 years ago because the parts of the old one would become unobtainable. Yet “It’s still going; we found the parts.”