Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he has nominated President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, an honour the American leader has long coveted after it was once awarded to one of Trump’s predecessors, Barack Obama.
The Prime Minister handed Trump a copy of the letter he sent placing his name in nomination with the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citing what he described as Trump’s “leadership of a just cause” by allowing American warplanes to strike Iranian nuclear sites last month, as well as what he called “the pursuit of peace and security” in “many lands.”
“I want to express the appreciation and admiration, not only of all Israelis, but of the Jewish people and many, many admirers around the world for your leadership,” said Netanyahu, who also praised Trump’s “extraordinary team.”
“I think our teams together make an extraordinary combination to meet challenges and seize opportunities. But the President has already realized great opportunities. He forged the Abraham accords. He’s forging peace, as we speak, in one country, in one region after the other.”
The Israeli leader’s comments came during a brief media availability at the start of what White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described as a “private dinner” during a press briefing with reporters earlier on Monday.
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Leavitt did not go into detail about planned topics of conversation but said there were “many important matters” that were “obviously ongoing” in the Middle East region for the leaders to discuss.
Leavitt also said Trump’s “utmost priority” in the region is to bring an end to Israel’s three-year-old war against Hamas in Gaza and for the militant group to return all the hostages it has held since the October 7 terror attacks.
“As you know, there was a ceasefire proposal that Israel supports, that was sent to Hamas, and we hope that they will agree to this proposal. We want to see all the hostages released. That’s on the top of the President’s mind, so that will be discussed, as well as the many other positive developments we’ve seen in the Middle East,” Leavitt said.
Netanyahu, who arrived in Washington in the wee hours of Monday morning, spent much of the day huddling with his own staff at Blair House, the official guest house for foreign leaders, across the street from the president’s home and office at the White House.
Before taking the short drive across Pennsylvania Avenue, the Israeli leader met with a pair of top Trump aides: Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer and longtime Trump friend who serves as the president’s roving special envoy, and Marco Rubio, the former Florida senator turned Secretary of State and Trump White House national security adviser.
The meeting with Rubio wrapped at approximately 6:00 pm ET, at which point the Secretary of State headed to the White House, where he was expected to attend the dinner with the two leaders along with Witkoff, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, and Mike Huckabee, the ex-Arkansas governor turned U.S. Ambassador to Israel.
Leavitt said Witkoff is set to travel to Doha, Qatar, later this week to engage in dialogue with the Qatari and Egyptian negotiators who have in turn been engaging with Hamas negotiators over the ceasefire proposal, which she described as “agreeable and appropriate.”
Trump said last week that Israel had agreed to the “necessary conditions to finalize” a 60-day truce to allow negotiations “to end the war” and urged Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsened.
The president has been piling pressure on both sides to broker a ceasefire and hostage release agreement, promising that a deal could come together this week.
The Independent understands the current 60-day structure on the table would lead to the release of 10 living captives and 15 bodies of those killed in Gaza. In exchange, there would be a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of Gaza, more aid would be allowed in, and talks would begin for a permanent ceasefire.
On Sunday, Trump told reporters he believes negotiators are “very close to a deal on Gaza.”
“I think there’s a good chance we have a deal with Hamas during the week pertaining to quite a few of the hostages. You know, we’ve gotten a lot of the hostages out, but pertaining to the remaining hostages, quite a few, we think we’ll have that done this week,” he said.
The president also said his administration is working on a “permanent deal” with Iran that would see Tehran give up its nuclear program following the airstrikes by U.S. warplanes last month.
The Independent
