Trump lauded for bringing peace – but did he really?

World leaders, diplomatic insiders, and much of the media are celebrating a ceasefire in Gaza, calling it a “peace deal” and endorsing Donald Trump’s now unsuccessful campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize.

- SAM KILEY

US secretary of state Marc Rubio lavished praise on his boss, saying the turning point came when Trump convened meetings with Arab and Muslim leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

“The president had some extraordinary phone calls and meetings that required a high degree of intensity and commitment and made this happen,” Rubio said.

As the deal emerged, Trump let it be known that it was his conversations with Netanyahu when he told him, “you can’t fight the world, Bibi”, that also played a part.

Yet Trump himself seemed to acknowledge that it wasn’t all just down to the art of the deal when he said: “So many different things happened that were so amazing. It’s a lot of talent involved, I'll tell you. But there was a certain degree of luck, too. You know, you need luck also. There is such a thing as luck.”

The latest, most detailed argument for The Donald to get the Norwegian gong, came from an Israeli hostage negotiator who said only the current US president could have delivered on a deal that was on the desk of his predecessor a year ago.

On the face of it, Gershon Baskin’s revelations, which he published on social media, show that Trump succeeded where Joe Biden failed.

“This deal could have been done a long time ago,” he wrote. “Hamas agreed to all of the same terms in September 2024. But at that point the response of the Israeli negotiators was that ‘the prime minister did not agree to end the war’” That Netanyahu refused the deal a year ago and that Biden failed to make him take it is not new. But it does reinforce the idea that Biden was weak - and that only Trump could have held “Bibi’s” feet to the fire to get him to agree to end the slaughter in Gaza, and to get the remaining hostages, dead and alive, back home.