Should Trump get a Nobel Peace Prize for Gaza?
The US has proved its lasting importance in the Middle East
People celebrate at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv on Oct. 9, following the announcement of the new Gaza ceasefire deal. Photo by John Wessels / AFP / Getty Images
Columnist Dan Perry October 9, 2025
If the Gaza war is winding down, there will be two clear lessons to be remembered. First, United States pressure and leverage are vitally useful; second, the Israelis and Palestinians cannot be left to their own devices without risking catastrophe, so U.S. engagement will be vital going forward.
The deal announced by President Donald Trump Wednesday night is a first-phase agreement in which Hamas consents to release the 47 remaining Oct. 7 hostages — of which 20 are believed alive — and to continue talking about the remainder of Trump’s proposed peace plan. Few expected Hamas to agree to that release, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, without a full deal to end the war. The assumption, supported by leaks, is that the group has received U.S. guarantees that fighting will indeed not resume.
The expectation, instead, is that in one form or another Hamas will agree to lay down its arms, at least in the Gaza Strip, handing power to a complex governing edifice that will include local Palestinian technocrats, the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, a multinational Arab force and an international oversight committee chaired by the U.S. If that occurs, it will only have happened because Hamas was under extraordinary pressure from external patrons.
Why did all this happen now? The timing reflects a convergence of domestic, regional and global incentives.
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political calculus has shifted. His governing coalition faces looming crises, including budget conflicts and Haredi demands for formal military exemptions. The exhausted public — and a growing minority of the military — has been demanding a resolution to the war, prioritizing the return of hostages, with increasing fury.
Where prolonging the fighting once served Netanyahu by forestalling an inquiry into his failures leading up to the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, the approach of elections in 2026 now incentivizes a quick end: It’s difficult to envision any route toward electoral success while advancing a broadly unpopular war. Moreover, Netanyahu cannot refuse Trump, who is lionized in Israel.
Now, he’ll attempt to flip the narrative away from the war’s cost to focus on its successes: The ultimate return of the hostages — aside from the dozens killed during the war — the weakening of Iran and its militias, and, hopefully, the freeing of Gaza from Hamas.
Across the Arab world, the pressure was building too. Outrage over Gaza’s devastation made passivity by other Middle Eastern nations politically dangerous.
Egypt faced massive economic damage from the Yemeni Houthis’ Gaza-related disruptions of Red Sea shipping, which emptied Suez Canal revenues. And Israel’s thrashing of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, the subsequent fall of the Hezbollah-backed dictator Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the weakening of Iran in the June war with Israel, all emboldened Arab leaders to turn against the militias — like Hamas — that Iran funded around the region.
In July, a historic turning point occurred when key Arab governments, including Qatar, publicly called on Hamas to disarm — a Rubicon in regional politics.
Potentially decisive was the recent addition of Turkey to the array of Muslim countries pressuring Hamas. Turkey had sometimes helped to prop up Hamas, allowing funding channels to the group and occasionally hosting its exiled leaders. But with his economy reeling, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is seeking defense markets and access to American F-35s, and in Trump he has a U.S. leader indifferent to his authoritarian ways. Signing onto Trump’s effort gave Erdoğan an opportunity to work toward those goals and help shove aside a huge distraction.
Washington used this landscape to orchestrate overwhelming regional pressure on Hamas, with carrots and sticks incentivizing every relevant actor. The most clear-cut case was Qatar receiving, last week, a NATO-style security agreement from the U.S., clearly a down payment to get it to bring Hamas to heel. With the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner again involved in the talks, it should surprise no one to see conversations about Israeli-Saudi normalization, and similar U.S. security guarantees to Riyadh, soon reentering the discourse.
Trump’s political and personal motivations are, as always, a factor, with public opinion in the U.S. turning against Israel. Just as the war created politically damaging splits in the Democratic Party headed into the 2024 election, it is now creating fissures in Trump’s MAGA movement, with the isolationist branch abandoning Israel and bashing Trump over his alliance with Netanyahu. Resolving the Gaza crisis allows him to demonstrate effectiveness on the international stage, burnish credibility, and even, who knows, be in the running for a Nobel Peace Prize.
In Europe, the war was also becoming a massive political problem, riling up large Muslim minorities in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Holland, Sweden and elsewhere. Center-left governments like those of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have watched the backlash strengthen the anti-migrant populist right. Facing these shifts, Europe can be expected to do what it must, diplomatically and financially, to pacify the Middle East.
And there will be much to be done, especially financially. Rebuilding Gaza will require tens of billions of dollars. Mainly, however, Israelis and Palestinians will need close supervision. With all due respect to local agency and principles of sovereignty, the two sides’ failure in managing their century-old conflict is too monumental, and too globally disruptive, to be ignored.
The Palestinians have produced weak, corrupt governance in the Palestinian Authority on one hand, and on the other a truly diabolical array of jihadist groups headlined by Hamas. And Israel has saddled itself with a right-wing government that seems to not understand the imperative of separating the Zionist enterprise from the masses of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
What should happen going forward is politically difficult but clear. Israel must be prevented by the U.S. from expanding its settlements in the West Bank, which undermine any credible path toward Palestinian statehood. Palestinians must be pressured to reform their governance: ending payments to the families of terrorists, banning all militias, reforming their education system to preach peace, and accepting realistic parameters for eventual statehood.
In the wider region, Arab states must not tolerate militias. Hezbollah must be disarmed in Lebanon. Iranian-backed Shia militias in Iraq must be neutralized or integrated under state authority. The Houthis must be decisively defeated to restore security to the Red Sea.
To follow through on all of this, U.S. involvement remains critical. U.S. pressure cannot always work — for example, it lacks the leverage on Moscow to end the Ukraine war — but in the Middle East, the stars are aligning. Conditional financial support, diplomatic backing, and military guarantees must accompany every step.
The final step, which would be truly worthy of a Nobel Prize, should be the two-state solution ending a century of conflict in the Holy Land.
