ENDLESS, INSOLUBLE PROBLEM
eated in the Oval Office earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed a token that President Donald Trump told him was “a key to our country and to our hearts.” A year from now, could Netanyahu receive the most prestigious gift of all: a Nobel Peace Prize? Israel’s longest-serving leader was in Washington D.C. to sign two historic agreements that, with the Trump administration’s support, he has forged in the past weeks with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. By the time the Nobel Committee makes its choices next fall, it’s possible that Israel may have achieved a deal with Saudi Arabia as well.
The inconceivable may become the almost-inevitable. Such an achievement surely warrants the Prize—until you remember that Nethanyahu is widely loathed, and in critics’ eyes leads the controversial government of a country that remains a target of global opprobrium for colonialism, military occupation and alleged human-rights abuses. And that the agreements that Netanyahu has wrangled with
Arab states of the Persian
Gulf fail to resolve, or even address, the situation of Palestinians—a cause with passionate supporters in Europe, on U.S. college campuses and with many U.S. liberals.
What’s a Nobel Committee to do?
Just last month, Netanyahu announced concurrently with fellow leaders a deal to normalize ties between Israel and the UAE, one of all but two Arab nations that have refused to recognize Israel since its 1948 establishment and its subsequent war with a coalition of Arab countries supportive of an overlapping Palestinian state. The second U.s.-brokered deal, with Bahrain, followed weeks later.
The back-to-back agreements signify Israel’s first new ties to the region in a quarter-century. Bypassing the protests of Palestinians who have enjoyed Arab support—at least nominally—since the 1948 war, the prime minister known both affectionately and derisively as “Bibi” made clear during the signing ceremony that he was fashioning himself as a new kind of peacemaker.
“I have devoted my life to securing Israel’s place among the nations,” Netanyahu said at the podium, “to ensure the future of the one and only Jewish state.” He acknowledged that his pursuit of peace was built on military might. “I have worked to make Israel strong, very strong, for history has taught us that strength brings security, strength brings allies and ultimately—and this is something President Trump has said again and again—ultimately strength brings peace,” the Israeli leader said.
Netanyahu’s office declined Newsweek’s request for comment and the Norwegian Nobel Institute did not respond.
A YEAR FROM NOW, NETANYAHU MAY HAVE LARGELY ENDED, OR SOLVED, THE HERETOFORE