Benjamin Netanyahu announced during a White House dinner that he was nominating Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. He said: “He’s forging peace as we speak, and one country and one region after the other.”
The Nobel Peace Prize is meant to recognize people who promote peace between nations and help reduce armies, according to the group behind it. That context didn’t stop some from raising eyebrows at the nomination.
Trump seemed pleased and told him: “Coming from you in particular, this is very meaningful.”
Israel has long pushed the US to hit back at Iran over its nuclear program. Last month, Trump’s administration launched two bunker-buster bombs and sent a wave of Tomahawk missiles at three important targets.
Trump said the strikes stopped what he called a ’12 day war’ between Iran and Israel. He claimed the attacks wiped out Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In an update he gave on Monday, Trump said: “We have scheduled Iran talks, and they want to. They want to talk.”
He also said that Israel and the US were working together to help Palestinians have “a better future.” Then he added something that got more attention, saying: “If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave.”
Trump continued by saying: “We’ve had great cooperation from… surrounding countries, great cooperation from every single one of them. So something good will happen.”
Not everyone sees it that way. Human rights experts criticized his earlier comments about turning Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” and said the whole plan amounted to ethnic cleansing.