Jared Kushner, the White House adviser under former President Trump, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on Sunday for his efforts in negotiating deals between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and other countries in the region over a hectic four-year period. months last year.
Reuters reported that Kushner and Avi Berkowitz, his former deputy, had been nominated by Harvard Law School emeritus professor Alan Dershowitz. Reuters called the deals the “most important diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East in 25 years,” and many Trump supporters said the media was downplaying their size to diminish his chances of reelection.
The Trump administration brokered peace agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Kushner told Fox News in October that there have been “people in Washington for 30, 40 years” who “have never been able to work on a single foreign transaction.”
He joked that peace deals are “much more difficult than President Trump makes them seem.”
Kushner said, “ People have been very critical of the president for whatever he does for the past three years … but the reality is he took a different approach to dealing with Washington, he took a different approach in the Middle East and results. “
Bahrain joined the United Arab Emirates in the fall in a celebratory ceremony at the White House to mark the ‘Abraham Accords,’ a pair of US-brokered diplomatic pacts with Israel. While the UAE’s deal with Israel formally established ties, the deal with Bahrain was less detailed and included a mutual promise to follow suit.
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The Palestinians cut ties with Trump’s White House and accused it of being unfairly biased towards Israel. US officials, in turn, have maintained ties between Israel and the Arab states, hoping to increase pressure on the Palestinians to reduce previous demands in peace talks.
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The Reuters report said President Biden is reviewing Trump’s deals and said it is unclear whether Trump’s departure from the White House will hurt Kushner’s chances of receiving the award.
Dershowitz told Fox News in a statement, “The Nobel Peace Prize is not for popularity. Nor is it an assessment of what the international community thinks of those who helped bring about peace. It is an award for satisfying “The discouraging criteria set out by Alfred Nobel in his will. These men, and the Abrahamic Accords, which they helped produce, meet these criteria better than any other person or group eligible for the award.”
Talia Kaplan and the Fox News Associated Press contributed to this report