Dem
47
GOP
53
Take a look at five selected front pages from various prominent websites, as of 9:30 p.m. PT Thursday night:
We tried to make the image as clear as we could, without it getting too large in terms of file size. Anyhow, hopefully readers can see clearly that four of the five outlets had the Letitia James indictment as their lead story, with three of those framing it as an abuse of power and an attempt to avenge Donald Trump, and Fox presenting James as a bad person who probably got what she deserved. The fifth outlet, Politico, was leading with an "exclusive" about a Trump administration staffer—Paul Ingrassia, the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security—who allegedly was on a work trip with several female staffers, and arranged for one of the staffers' hotel room reservations to be canceled, so she had to room with him.
Meanwhile, all five outlets had the news out of Israel in the 1B slot, not 1A. And that was true of many other outlets we looked at, including The Hill, USA Today, CBS News, ABC News and Drudge Report. In fact, the only major U.S. outlet we could find that had Gaza in 1A was NBC News. Oh, and The Los Angeles Times had neither Gaza nor Letitia James in 1A, preferring instead to give that real estate to the Dodgers' victory over the Phillies. Priorities!
We start with this information because it affirms our instinctive sense of the news out of Israel—it's substantive enough that it merits attention, but it's too squishy to fully commit to it. Put another way, "PEACE IN ISRAEL" is a 1A story. "PEACE IN ISRAEL... MAYBE?" is a 1B story. This is "PEACE IN ISRAEL... MAYBE?", as you can see above.
First up, a rundown of information that does not appear to be in dispute. Last week, Donald Trump unveiled a 20-point plan for peace in Gaza, and he backed that up with threats that if Hamas didn't take the deal, "all hell will break out" against them. A couple of days later, after U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner traveled to the Middle East for some quick and dirty diplomacy, Hamas accepted. Yesterday, the Israeli government also accepted. In theory, that means that "phase one" of the peace deal is in effect, and everyone has to stop shooting. Meanwhile, Hamas has to return all remaining hostages, both living and deceased, while Israel has to free a couple of thousand Palestinians taken prisoner, and allow aid to be distributed freely in Gaza. The U.S. is sending 200 troops to Gaza to "monitor" the ceasefire.
And now, some questions. First up: Is the ceasefire actually being observed? Presumably, it will be, especially once U.S. troops arrive on the scene. However, in roughly 100.0% of wars in human history that have ended with an armistice like this, the warring factions always make sure to get in as much shooting as they can before they can't shoot anymore. At least two dozen Palestinians died yesterday, and as of 8:00 p.m. PT, it could not be confirmed by international observers that the Israeli Defense Force had received and/or implemented an order to stop fighting. So, the violence might not be over quite yet.
Next question: What next? (Z) is no expert in the Middle East, but he does know a thing or two about military history. And any military historian would certainly affirm two things. First, once the shooting has stopped, that is a very, very good thing, because it's pretty hard to get it started again. After months or years, people get very sick of war, and they quickly become very enamored of peace. Second, the process of getting from "we're not shooting anymore" to "a full, formal and stable peace" can be very sticky and very, very difficult. Think, for example, of the Treaty of Versailles, which produced a peace, but not one that proved stable. Or think of the armistice that ended the Korean War in July of 1953. They never did figure out the next step after that one, which is why the two Koreas are now in the eighth decade of a cold war and the 38th parallel is the most heavily militarized border in the world.
There are already many, many pieces about the problems that need to be ironed out if this peace deal is going to go anywhere. You can read examples here, here, here, here and here, if you like to get weedy. For our part, we'll highlight just one issue, though one that seems the toughest nut to crack from where we sit. Pretty much everyone agrees that Hamas needs to go, and that governance of Gaza should become the responsibility of the international community. Under the Trump plan, that governance would be done by a "Board of Peace" co-chaired by Trump and former U.K. PM Tony Blair. The problem here is that the "pretty much everyone" who agrees does not include... Hamas. It also does not, apparently, include the Palestinians. Already Hamas has said that the governing organ, whatever it is, needs to be Palestinian, and not international. This will not be easy to resolve. And even if Hamas agrees to cede power (no guarantee), they are certainly not going to be willing to entrust their protection to the Israeli government. So, what happens then? If Trump agrees to provide some sort of permanent security for Hamas, of all people, or he allows them to flee to, say, Iran, many Republicans will scream bloody murder. Some Democrats, too.
A third question: How much credit does Donald Trump deserve? Maybe his diplomacy and/or his saber-rattling mattered, but maybe it didn't. It's actually not too surprising that the two sides were willing to stop shooting now, even when both rejected a similar plan from Joe Biden last year. It is none too easy to maintain a resistance, guerrilla-type war effort, and Hamas was/is clearly running low on supplies and internal support.
On the other side of the conflict, while there seems to be sufficient materiel and sufficient political support domestically, Israel's position within the international community has weakened substantially this year. A number of prominent organizations have declared that nation to be guilty of genocide and, of course, the ICC has indicted PM Benjamin Netanyahu. On top of that, a number of key Western nations, including France, Canada, the U.K., Portugal and Australia, have recognized Palestine as a state. And this week, for the first time, U.S. pollsters found that more Americans support Palestine than support Israel. The gap is slight (about 1 point), but that also represents a 49-point shift since the October 7 attacks. In short, both sides of this conflict had very strong motivations to get while the gettin' is still good. Or, put another way, while Trump might deserve some/a lot of credit, he might just be entering from stage right at a very opportune time. Undoubtedly, people who understand this subject much better than we do will share some intelligent opinions over the next few days and weeks, as the dust settles.
And a final question: Was this deal rushed, so Trump could make the "Nobel Peace Prize" deadline? Trump badly wants a Peace Prize, and the announcement of the 2025 prize will be made this morning. So, if he's going to score a 9th-inning-two-outs-count-is-full "win," then some sort of deal had to be in place by yesterday at the very latest. Most people would love to be recognized in this way, and so one can hardly begrudge Trump's interest in winning. The fact that a big part of his motivation is to "equal" Barack Obama is less than admirable, of course, and the open and aggressive campaigning for the award is just plain crass. The main reason that all of this matters is that creating a self-imposed deadline can certainly help to encourage progress. However, it can also encourage sloppy work, and leaving loose ends unresolved. We'll eventually see which of these it is. It is worth mentioning that Trump was in a meeting yesterday when Secretary of State Marco Rubio came in and yanked his boss out, telling him (it was written on a note captured by photographers) that it was necessary to send out a message on social media immediately, so Trump could be first to announce the deal. Clearly, whatever other motivations the administration has, the PR angle looms very large.
We are writing this part around 11:00 p.m. PT, and we already know that the most common question in the mailbag for this week is "Could Trump really win a Nobel Prize here?" It is probable that the answer to that question will be known by the time this post goes live, and it will certainly be known before the Q&A goes live on Saturday morning. So, we are going to give our answer right now. If we find out what actually happened before this post goes live, we will add that information (and we promise not to edit our guess, if we prove to be wrong).
Our guess, and we think we're on pretty firm ground here, is that Trump will not win the Nobel. We have three reasons for thinking this. The first is that there have previously been three major "breakthroughs" in this area that were brokered by U.S. presidents: The Camp David Accords (1978), the Oslo Accords (1993) and the Abraham Accords (2020). Two of those produced a Nobel—Camp David and Oslo—and even those didn't go to the president involved (Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, respectively; instead the Committee recognized Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin for the Camp David Accords and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat for the Oslo Accords). Further, the Oslo Accords obviously did not produce a lasting peace and, in fact, that is usually held out as one of the "embarrassing" Nobels (along with the one that went to Henry Kissinger for "ending" the war in Vietnam). Our conclusion is that the bar for winning a Nobel for this issue is pretty high, and "PEACE IN ISRAEL... MAYBE?" probably doesn't clear it.
The second strike against Trump is that the committee just does not want to recognize him. In part, that is because he is the antithesis of the type of person the Norwegian Nobel Committee admires and supports. But the main problem—after all, they've recognized some pretty problematic people before—is that Trump has an overall record that does not say "peace," from scapegoating immigrants to sinking Venezuelan boats to pandering to Vladimir Putin to creating economic turmoil to cutting aid to those in need. It will not be easy for the Norwegians to swallow all of that. If the situation in Israel works out well, and if Trump is somehow able to bring peace to Ukraine next year, he might leave the committee with no choice. But his résumé is not there, not yet.
The third strike against Trump is logistics. The Nobel Committee is fairly secretive about their process, and we cannot find clear information as to exactly when it votes (only "usually in mid-September"), or whether there is any provision for them to "change their mind" at the last minute. We would imagine that the decision was made well before the last week's worth of developments in Israel. We would also imagine that once they vote, it's a done deal, and there are no takesie-backsies. In other words, it's probable that Trump's "deadline" was actually too late to matter.
Trump does have a couple of things operating in his favor. The Nobel Peace Prize betting odds suggest the field is fairly balkanized, which means anything could happen. That said, the favorite is Venezuelan opposition leader (and somewhat Trump nemesis) María Corina Machado; she's the person we'd bet on if we had such a severe gambling problem that we were betting on Nobel Peace Prizes. The other thing Trump has going for him is that the situation in Israel has rarely, if ever, gotten as ugly as what's happened in the last 2 years. So, there's certainly some bonus points available here, as opposed to what happened with the other presidential peace deals.
Still, we think the odds are strongly against him. And, we will note, the betting markets agree. Trump's odds of winning on Polymarket are actually just 1-in-30, which places him barely ahead of Elon Musk, Keir Starmer and Pope Leo, among others, and behind not only Machado, but also the relief teams in Sudan and Gaza, as well as wife-of-Alexei-Navalny Yulia Navalnaya (another Trump nemesis). Navalnaya is a leader of the anti-Putin resistance but, if chosen, she would basically just be a proxy for her husband, who cannot win himself because he is dead.
One other clue, which again will probably be moot by the time anyone reads this: The Norwegians are already making contingency plans for whatever punishments Trump might try to visit upon them if and when he doesn't get the prize.
We certainly hope that this breakthrough is real. And if you told us you'd gotten into the DeLorean and learned that Trump was the 2026 Nobel Peace laureate, that would be good news, because it would mean that the peace in Israel held (and probably that the war in Ukraine was finally over). But for the immediate future, it's hold-your-breath-and-hope-for-the-best time. (Z)
Update: The prize did indeed go to Machado.