Acclaim­ing what  amounts to a cease­fire in Gaza as poten­tial­ly (or defin­i­tive­ly) wor­thy of a Nobel Peace Prize before it becomes a signed-by-all-sides peace agree­ment, is pre­ma­ture. It also threat­ens to sub­sume what the very sug­ges­tion makes clear should be award­ed: an Igno­ble Indif­fer­ence-to-Peace Prize.

There are so many can­di­dates that it would be eas­i­er to bestow the prize col­lec­tive­ly, as was done in 1988, when  the Nobel Com­mit­tee award­ed its prize to UN peace­keep­ing forces because of their con­tri­bu­tion “…to reduc­ing ten­sions where an armistice has been nego­ti­at­ed but a peace treaty has yet to be established”.
The peace­keep­ers did so under what the Nobel com­mit­tee described  “ extreme­ly dif­fi­cult conditions.”
The Wash­ing­ton Post laud­ed Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump “…for push­ing Netanyahu after Israel’s bomb­ing of Hamas tar­gets inside Qatar near­ly derailed the sen­si­tive nego­ti­a­tions. No oth­er Amer­i­can pres­i­dent has man­aged the rela­tion­ship with that dif­fi­cult part­ner more intuitively.”
It wasn’t react­ing to the deaths of more than 67,000 peo­ple, famine,  mas­sive destruc­tion and cred­i­ble charges of geno­cide being com­mit­ted that earned Trump the acclaim of being a cut above his predecessors.
It was the deaths of six peo­ple (none of them the actu­al tar­get) in an Israeli air raid in Qatar, because, apart from being a poten­tial­ly fatal blow to the peace efforts, it  infu­ri­at­ed the Qataris, who played a piv­otal medi­a­tion role, which in turn could have  unbal­anced Trump’s mul­ti­ple busi­ness deal­ings with them and oth­er Arab states.
The  pro­tes­tors in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square appeal­ing to him per­son­al­ly as the best hope for end­ing their ongo­ing agony also prod­ded Trump’s hard line with Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Binyamin Netanyahu, although their cause alone should have prompt­ed his atten­tion long before it became a des­per­ate cry of last resort in the face of their own leader’s cold, self-serv­ing intransigence.

                          IGNOBLE  WINNERS

For­mer Pres­i­dent Joe Biden rates an Igno­ble award because he could have bul­lied Netanyahu if not into peace, sure­ly less blood­shed and destruc­tion, by cut­ting off arms sup­plies on the legal and moral basis that the Israeli Defence Force was bla­tant­ly vio­lat­ing terms of usage.
Instead, he allowed per­son­al empa­thy for the Israelis to  blind him to their excess­es, with lit­tle regard for the con­se­quences to ordi­nary Gazans.
The right wing extrem­ists in the Israeli cab­i­net, whose rhetoric, zeal­ous reli­gious-based aims and pre­ferred method­ol­o­gy for deal­ing with what they see as the “Pales­tin­ian prob­lem”, both in Gaza and the occu­pied West Bank, bear what ought to be seen as a dis­turbing­ly eerie sim­i­lar­i­ty to the per­se­cu­tion of Jews that spurred West­ern nations to sup­port the cre­ation of Israel, have earned  a spe­cial Igno­ble award.
For the medal cer­e­mo­ny, they could share the podi­um with Hamas, whose stat­ed aim of elim­i­nat­ing said state, and will­ing­ness to allow inno­cent civil­ians, espe­cial­ly women and chil­dren, to suf­fer in the name of gain­ing sym­pa­thy, speed-bumped the peace efforts until the cru­el­ty became unfath­omable to all but the most self-blink­ered of their supporters.
That it took Trump’s obses­sion with match­ing for­mer U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s ques­tion­able feat of win­ning a Nobel Peace Prize to fuel the efforts is, in an albeit twist­ed way,  a pos­i­tive for hav­ing an ego-dri­ven personality.
Netanyahu’s dis­re­gard for any­thing and every­one beyond his own ego and avoid­ing account­abil­i­ty for the many charges against him, is the oth­er side of that same coin.
But the Nobel Peace Prize, like win­ning the Con­clave vote for a new Pope, should not go to who­ev­er craves and lob­bies hard­est for it. The recip­i­ent ought to be the can­di­date who earned it by dint of doing the right thing for the sake of it. And that includes not los­ing inter­est once the ini­tial rush and cheer­ing fade to dogged grunt work.
The chal­lenge of that was artic­u­lat­ed in two sim­ple interviews.
In Gaza, an Eng­lish teacher said he felt “joy for the end of the war and the killing, and sor­row for every­thing we’ve lost.”
In Tel Aviv, a young Israeli who lost fam­i­ly in the Hamas slaugh­ter that start­ed the whole hor­ror show, told a for­eign  radio reporter in Hostage Square the time had come go put aside revenge in favour of peace.
Under­stand­able and  jus­ti­fied as the eupho­ria over what has been achieved is, it should not be allowed to sub­sume dol­ing out oppro­bri­um for the stu­pid­i­ty, venal­i­ty, igno­rance, total lack of empa­thy and unwill­ing­ness, as John Lennon sang, to “give peace a chance”.
For those who opt­ed to con­tin­ue the war, even when its cru­el futil­i­ty became appar­ent ignominy is the only deserved award.
And the inno­cent vic­tims on both sides have cer­tain­ly earned the option of  bestow­ing the prize, and forc­ing the Igno­ble recip­i­ents to look them in the eye when they do.

Com­ments are wel­comed. Click CONTACT on the site header.
To receive e‑mail alerts to new posts, Click SIGN-UP on the header.