Four Arab-Israel Peace Deals: Kushner and deputy nominated for Nobel Prize

Jared Kushner and deputy Avi Berkowitz were nominated for their work on the Abraham Accords.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

White House Senior advisor Jared Kushner, along with his deputy Avi Berkowitz, have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Reuters reports on Monday.

Kushner, who is also former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and Berkowitz were nominated by famed attorney Alan Dershowitz for their role in orchestrating the Abraham Accords, which saw the U.S. mediate normalization agreements between Israel and four Muslim states. (Dershowitz could nominate as a professor emeritus of Harvard Law School.)

Israel signed deals with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Reports said that five-to-10 additional agreements were in the works. However, the Trump administration was defeated in the Nov. 2020 elections, putting a  pause on the process.

The Accords were the first Arab-Israeli peace deals in 26 years, the last being Israel’s deal with Jordan in 1994. Israel also made a deal with Egypt in 1979.

However, unlike those deals which called for Israel to give land concessions, particularly in the case of Egypt, Israel was not asked to give up anything tangible in return this time, although some critics have argued Israel gave up extending sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria.

There are also signs the deals overseen by Kushner will be warmer than those inked with Egypt and Jordan, whose populations are inveterately anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.

It’s not clear what Kushner’s chances are of winning the prize, given the Nobel Committee has made some unusual choices in the past and has often been accused of a left-leaning tilt. The 2009 decision to award then-President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was widely criticized, as he had been in office only eight-and-a-half months and was nominated after less than two weeks in office.

Kushner’s nomination will also likely meet with headwinds as everything connected to the Trump administration at the moment is toxic, following the Jan. 6 Capitol riots in which Trump supporters stormed the building to try and prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory, considered controversial by many on the Right.

Dershowitz indirectly referred to these issues in his nomination letter, when he reminded the Nobel committee, “The Nobel Peace Prize is not for popularity. Nor is it an assessment of what the international community may think of those who helped bring about peace. It is an award for fulfilling the daunting criteria set out by Alfred Nobel in his will.”

Dershowitz also noted the contributions of former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and former Israeli ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer to the Abraham Accords.