NYT columnist: Biden can win Nobel Peace Prize if he intervenes in Gaza conflict

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is urging President Biden to take a more active role in bringing a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East, suggesting the president could win a Nobel Peace Prize if he successfully helps de-escalate the conflict. 

“To President Biden I’d say today, ‘You may not be interested in Middle East peacemaking, but Middle East peacemaking is interested in you,’ ” Friedman wrote in a column titled “How Joe Biden Can Win a Nobel Peace Prize” that was published by the Times on Sunday. 

The longtime journalist and political columnist referenced former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his ability to strike the “first real peace breakthrough between Israelis and Arabs” following a war in 1973. 

“Today, if you look and listen closely, you can sense a similar moment shaping up in the wake of the latest Hamas-Israel war,” Friedman wrote. 

After days of fighting that have left hundreds of people, including children, dead in the Gaza Strip, the U.S. government announced last week that a temporary cease-fire between Hamas and Israel had been agreed to. 

“We have held intensive high-level discussions hour by hour, literally … with an aim of avoiding the sort of prolonged conflict we have seen in previous years when hostilities have broken out,” Biden said. “My administration will continue our quiet and relentless diplomacy toward that end. I believe we have a genuine opportunity to make progress and I am committed to working toward it.”

Biden’s administration has taken heat from congressional Democrats over the news of a reported arms deal with the Israelis, and some who worked on his presidential campaign have called on him to “support Palestinians’ rights to peace, security, and self determination and to hold Israel accountable for violating those rights.” 

After chronicling recent tensions between the Arabs and Jews in the region over the last several decades, Friedman said the deal Kissinger struck was “only possible because all these leaders actually agreed to ignore the core problem — the intra-state problem, the problem of two people wanting a state on the same land. In other words, the Israeli-Palestinian problem.” 

He ended his column with a message to the president, who some observers noted often reads Friedman’s writings. 

“You may be interested in China, but the Middle East is still interested in you. You deftly helped to engineer the cease-fire from the sidelines. Do you want to, do you dare to, dive into the middle of this new Kissingerian moment?” Friedman asked. “I won’t blame you if you don’t. I’d just warn you that it is not going to get better on its own.”