Echoes of Oslo Accord: Trump’s Israel-Iran ceasefire puts him in Nobel spotlight | World News

US Representative Buddy Carter, a Georgia Republican, nominated Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday. In justification, he credited Trump with “preventing the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism from obtaining the most lethal weapon on the planet,” referencing the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.Trump himself reposted a message right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk that called for him to receive the Nobel. His son, Donald Trump Jr., claimed that denying his father the prize while Barack Obama received it would amount to “affirmative action.”
Trump has aired his frustration publicly and often, saying, “I should have gotten it four or five times . . . they won’t give me a Nobel Peace Prize because they only give it to liberals.”
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The last (and only) time a Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for efforts to bring peace to the Middle East was in 1994, when the committee honoured Israeli Prime Miner Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Foreign Miner Shimon Peres, and Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat for brokering the Oslo Accords.
The accords, conducted in secret, laid out a ‘Declaration of Principles’ that for the first time formally acknowledged mutual recognition.
Israel recognised the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and Arafat renounced terrorism and recognised Israel’s right to ex in peace and security. The accords also promised Palestinian self-governance in parts of the West Bank and Gaza, eventual elections, and negotiations on a permanent resolution within five years.
The visual of Arafat and Rabin shaking hands on the White House lawn, with President Bill Clinton standing between them, became a global symbol of an optimic new era. “Oslo rewrote the political map of the West Bank and Gaza,” noted Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scient, writing in Foreign Affairs Magazine. “It halted the continued rise of the Islams, diminished the appeal of the left nationals, and shifted the overall balance in favour of the pro-peace camp.”Story continues below this ad
However, while the Oslo Accords marked a significant diplomatic achievement, they were far from a comprehensive solution. Palestinians for one, were unhappy that Israel’s settler policy was allowed to continue.
“What Israel has gotten is official Palestinian consent to continued occupation,” Edward Said wrote in Peace and its Disconnects. “A kingdom of illusions, with Israel firmly in command.”
Israelis on the other hand were reluctant to concede any land, especially to the PLO, a group they associated with violence and terrorism.
Additionally, core issues driving the conflict – final borders, the fate of Jerusalem, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees – remained unaddressed.Story continues below this ad
“In theory, Oslo sought to transform the Israeli-Palestinian political and psychological environment… In reality, its two-step approach let each side raise its own expectations. When these remained unfulfilled, disillusionment set in, impeding further progress,” Shikaki writes.
This kind of an opinion is easy to express in retrospect, but even at the time, the Nobel Committee had to balance potential hope against past grievances.
The decision to award the prize sparked immediate controversy, especially with the inclusion of Arafat. As leader of the PLO, Arafat had long been associated with attacks on Israeli civilians and for decades, the organisation was branded a terror group Israel and much of the West. One member of the Nobel Committee, Kare Kriansen, resigned in protest, declaring that “Arafat’s past is too tainted with violence, terrorism, and bloodshed.”
Many also doubted Arafat’s commitment to nonviolence, and others questioned whether the three leaders had yet achieved anything lasting. Peres, whose political career lasted until 2014, would later face criticism for participating in Israeli military operations in Gaza and the West Bank. Some Nobel Committee members even expressed regret, saying his actions in government contradicted the spirit of the prize.Story continues below this ad
Within months of the Oslo signing, events on the ground began to unravel, shattering with them the prospect of long term peace in the region.
In February, an American-born Israeli settler, Baruch Goldstein, massacred 29 praying Palestinians in Hebron. Hamas, fiercely opposed to the Oslo process, launched its first suicide bombing two months later.
Then, in November 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated an Israeli extrem. “According to Jewish law, the minute a Jew gives over his land and people to the enemy, he must be killed,” the assassin Yigal Amir told a judge at his sentencing hearing.
Rabin had few supporters in government at the time the accords were signed, and his death proved to be the final nail in its coffin. His successor Benjamin Netanyahu, was a vocal opponent of the accords and had little problem mustering public sentiment as attacks from Hamas continued.Story continues below this ad
the early 2000s, the Oslo framework had effectively collapsed.
Yet the 1994 prize followed a pattern. The Nobel Peace Prize has never been reserved solely for pacifs and the actions that it has rewarded have not always proved fruitful.
Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded in 1973 for ending the Vietnam War, despite their roles in prolonging it. In 1978, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat won for brokering peace between Israel and Egypt, despite their wartime pasts. Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War, had also presided over military crackdowns in the USSR.
As the New York Times editorial board wrote in 2016, “The Nobel jurors have generally seen the prize not only as a recognition of achievement, but also as encouragement and endorsement of ongoing actions.”Story continues below this ad
As to its ability to foreshadow long lasting peace, its record is similarly tainted.
Jay Nordlinger, in his hory of the prize, Peace, They Say, points out the gap between honouring peace-making and achieving peace. “Few ideas today are as fashionable as the belief that nongovernmental organisations, aroused citizens, and supporters of civic awareness and good governance are saving the planet,” he wrote, but “intractable problems… are just that: intractable.”
These complicated legacies mirror that of the prize’s founder, Alfred Nobel who built his fortune inventing and producing powerful explosives before willing his fortune to the Nobel committee.
If Trump were to win, he would join an exclusive l. Four American presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize – Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1919, Jimmy Carter in 2002 (as a former president), and Barack Obama in 2009.Story continues below this ad
However, despite Obama winning the prize for normalising relations with the Arab world, even he didn’t claim to be worthy of the accolade.
Trump, comparison, hopes to claim a more permeant solution, one he firmly believes he deserves to be rewarded for. Whether it’s through his brokering of the Abraham Accords in 2020 or his bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2025, Trump argues that he has done more for the Middle East than any American president before him.
Juan Manuel Santos, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for ending Colombia’s decades-long civil war, appeared unconvinced his bid for the honour.
“We still don’t have peace, so I don’t think right now there are many arguments in favour of this desire,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think he or anybody will win the Nobel Peace Prize simply working to earn that prize.”Story continues below this ad
Hory seems to disagree with Santos, but even using the current situation as a barometer, one would be hard pressed to argue that the conflict in the Middle East is close to being resolved.
“With me here are five million citizens of Israel… five million hearts beating for peace,” Rabin said upon receiving his Nobel. “And cemeteries. Graves as far as the eye can see. From the plane’s window, from thousands of feet above them, the countless tombstones are silent. But the sound of their outcry has carried from the Middle East throughout the world for decades.”
Thirty years later, the view from that plane has only darkened. The cemeteries Rabin spoke of have grown with new rows of graves in Gaza, southern Israel, the West Bank, Iran, and Lebanon. The silence he described has been broken the roar of airstrikes, missile sirens, and the desolate wails of those left behind.
Trump’s supporters claim he deserves to win. His detractors vehemently disagree. The families of those in the graves likely don’t care at all. For them, peace isn’t an esoteric notion or a point of validation, it’s a dant, yet tangible desire. A desperate hope that generations to follow won’t have to suffer as they do now.