EDITORIAL: If peace holds, hand Donald Trump his Nobel Prize

Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that he covets above all the Nobel Peace Prize.

He wants to be lauded as the peacemaker president, the man who succeeded where his rivals — key among them his predecessor Joe Biden — failed, by bringing calm to the ravaged Middle East.

He might have just done it.

There remain significant questions about the ceasefire deal brokered on Thursday.

Mr Trump’s original 20-point peace plan, endorsed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, contained a condition that Hamas fighters disarm and accede control of Gaza to a technocratic transitional government led by a committee of “qualified Palestinians and international experts”.

Whether Hamas has agreed to either of those demands is unclear.

But the terrorist group has agreed to return at long last the remaining 48 hostages, two years after they were stolen from their homeland. Only 20 are believed to still be alive.

It is regrettable that Hamas, though depleted, does continue to exist

There is every chance this deal could collapse before those 20 survivors and the corpses of the dead are repatriated to Israel.

But for their grieving families, the shattered Palestinian population, and for the world which has watched with increasing revulsion as this devastated war unfolded, it offers at last reason to hope that a durable peace is possible.

If that hope comes to pass, the world will have Donald Trump to thank, a fact even his critics have acknowledged.

“This ceasefire and hostage release, if it happens, only came to fruition because of Trump’s willingness to pressure Prime Minister Netanyahu,” said Aaron David Miller of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spent 24 years with the US Department of State working on Middle East peace efforts.

“No president, Republican or Democrat, has ever come down harder on an Israeli prime minister on issues so critically important to his politics or his country’s security interests.”

That appears to have been the secret sauce to Mr Trump’s success: providing Mr Netanyahu America’s steadfast support as the rest of the world turned against Israel meant that when the President told him it was time to pull back, Mr Netanyahu listened.

But at the same time, Mr Trump made it clear to Hamas that if they did not take this opportunity, Israel would have his blessing to “finish the job” by destroying every last shred of the militant group.

Peace, or else.

It is regrettable that Hamas, though greatly depleted, does continue to exist. Despite a tactically brilliant military campaign from Israel, which has taken out much of Hamas’s top leadership, it continues to exert its toxic influence on Palestine.

Whether this ceasefire can develop into Mr Trump’s hoped for “strong, durable and everlasting peace” will depend largely on successfully eliminating anyone with Hamas sympathies from Palestine’s future leadership.

That will be an even tougher mountain to climb. But, for the first time in two years, we have reason to hope.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore.