On Sept. 15, 2020, the Emirati and Bahraini foreign ministers joined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former President Donald Trump at the White House to sign the Abraham Accords. In a single day, the number of Arab states recognizing Israel doubled. Morocco and Sudan soon followed. The Trump strategy, embraced by centrist Arab leaders, to cease allowing Palestinians to hold broader regional peace hostage appeared to succeed.
Iran, and perhaps Turkey, sought to use the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel to derail rapprochement with Israel. For a time, it appeared to work. Professional peace processors who populated Washington think tanks or surrounded President Joe Biden chided that Hamas’s action showed there was no bypassing Palestinian aspirations.
The State Department legitimized Hamas with negotiations, and many European leaders and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres rewarded Hamas by recognizing the state of Palestine at the United Nations, casting aside Oslo Accords requirements that Palestinians first renounce terrorism.
Despite growing calls for a ceasefire and compromise, Netanyahu held firm. He succeeded. In just over a year, he has single-handedly redefined counterterrorism by killing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, and Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. No true proponent of peace should mourn any of those whom Israel struck. Hamas unapologetically calls for genocide in its covenant, and Nasrallah famously quipped, “If [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”
By shattering the illusion both that terrorism could defeat Israel and that the United States and Europe could restrain it, Netanyahu advanced prospects for peace across the region. With their grandiose dreams of defeating Israel dashed, more sober leaders can now emerge to succeed Mahmoud Abbas, the 88-year-old Holocaust–denying chairman of the Palestinian Authority now serving the 20th year of his elected four-year term, or fill the vacuum in Gaza. In the Gaza Strip, local clan leaders can assume leadership now that Israel has removed Palestinian implants from abroad.
Certainly, the Norwegian Nobel Committee will be loath to choose Netanyahu. Presently, Norway competes with the United Kingdom to be Europe’s second-most antisemitic country after Ireland. To pick Netanyahu would mean both a willingness to dispense with progressive virtue signaling and acknowledging its past embrace of the cartoonish view of the Israeli leader that dominates Western society.
A sober assessment, however, suggests Netanyahu seeks peace but differs from previous leaders to ensure it is sustainable and permanent. Netanyahu, for example, does not oppose a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict but rather insists rightly that mutual recognition and respect requires Palestinians to openly acknowledge Israel to be a Jewish state and that the Palestinian state cannot become a satrapy for Iran, Turkey, or other rejectionist states.
Nor does awarding Netanyahu a Nobel Prize mean endorsing him politically. He should still face responsibility for the intelligence failures that preceded the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Similar to former Israeli Prime Minister Gold Meir after the Yom Kippur War intelligence failure, this likely means resignation.
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Rather, a Nobel Peace Prize would be the simple recognition that Netanyahu, through creativity, stubbornness, and military leadership, forwarded peace more in the Middle East than any leader of the past half century, if not Israel’s entire history.
Those who seek real peace should recognize that pacifism often leads to its antithesis. Brute military force defeated Nazism, fascism, and the Imperial Japanese Army. A Vietnamese invasion, not the American Friends Service Committee’s proposed engagement and diplomacy, ended the Khmer Rouge’s odious regime. Likewise, it was the Tanzanian army, not diplomacy, that sent former President. of Uganda Idi Amin, a cannibal dictator, into exile. Netanyahu understands history. It is time Norwegian politicians and the Nobel Committee recognize it as well.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.