‘I’ll fly over and hand him the award!’: As the Gaza ceasefire holds, is Donald Trump really in line for the Nobel Peace Prize?

After months of bloodshed and untold misery, a ceasefire is finally in place in Gaza. Prisoners on both sides are being returned to their jubilant families and, while the underlying conflict is far from resolved and the returning Gazans face a painful struggle to rebuild their lives, at least the bombs and bullets have stopped flying.

And the man we have to thank for this is… Donald Trump? Yeah, I know, we live in weird times huh? Just for the moment, let’s leave everything awful about Trump aside for a moment and zero in on this particular series of events. For months on end, the Biden administration had been fruitlessly trying to negotiate an end (or even a pause) to the Gaza conflict, only to find their efforts ignored, rebuffed, and undermined.

Biden never wavered from his firm pro-Israel stance and, while there were hemmings and hawings about theoretical U.S. arms restrictions after various IDF atrocities, his administration steadfastly backed, armed, and defended Israel long after it became clear the issue was an electoral liability.

Most (including me) assumed Trump would follow a similar if not worse trajectory. In his first term, he was a bolted-on Israel cheerleader, notably spearheading the move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. At first glance, Trump’s second term would appear to be a license for Benjamin Netanyahu to continue his war without even the ineffectual grumblings of the Democratic Party to worry him.

This hasn’t happened. In a whirlwind of diplomacy and mediation, Trump’s envoy Steven Witkoff brought the two sides together and has hammered out a deal. It’s fair to argue that the reasons behind this urgency are probably self-serving: a successful Gaza ceasefire gives Trump a big win going into his inauguration, will boost his approval numbers, and makes him look more effective than Biden. On a personal level, Trump may simply not have wanted to deal with this poisonous foreign policy headache any more than he absolutely had to.

But whatever the reason for it, Trump’s pointed comment to both sides that “all hell will break out” if prisoners on both sides weren’t released and a ceasefire wasn’t in place by his inauguration forced concessions. Prime Minister Netanyahu, by now long used to doing whatever he wants, has suddenly found his leash firmly yanked by Trump. So, despite opening himself to intense domestic criticism from far-right Israeli politicians, he’s been forced to release Palestinian prisoners and — no doubt gritting his teeth — absorb videos of wild celebrations in Gaza and cheering Hamas fighters.

All of this means that, somehow, Donald Trump is now an obvious candidate — if not the frontrunner — for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah, I feel as lightheaded writing that as you did reading it. The prize, considered the most prestigious award in the world, is given to people or organizations that have “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Note that the award does not seem to care about the motives behind the creation of peace, meaning even if Trump just did this to make his own life easier, he still stopped the war.

The murmurs that he’s now in contention have already begun online:

It’s also been theorized that Trump is doing this specifically because he wants the Nobel Peace Prize. U.S. academic Marc Lamont Hill sounds skeptical about Trump’s reasoning, but agrees that if the incoming president really has stopped the war and helped establish a secure Palestinian state: “I’ll fly over and hand him the award.”

But let’s get some perspective for a moment. While Trump may have (maybe) done one good thing, we’re about to see an avalanche of really bad things emanating from the Oval Office. Even if Trump can take credit for the Gaza ceasefire, it’d be difficult to argue he should get a Nobel Peace Prize if he’s in the middle of, say, invading Greenland. Plus, if he does get one, remember that they once handed out a Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger, so it’s far from the ultimate seal of moral greatness.