“Benjamin Netanyahu nominates Donald Trump for Nobel peace prize”– that headline seems to have been pulled straight out of the satirical news outlet the Onion. But it’s 100% real news: the Israeli prime minister who has been indicted by the international criminal court for alleged war crimes in Gaza has proposed the US president, his largest weapons supplier and strongest political backer, as a candidate for the world’s top peacemaking prize.

It’s absurd, akin to nominating one’s drug dealer for the Nobel prize in medicine. But there’s a cynical logic behind Netanyahu’s publicity stunt: he is exploiting Trump’s need for flattery to prolong Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and to continue attacking other countries in the Middle East, including Iran, Lebanon and Yemen. Before Netanyahu showed up for dinner at the White House on Monday with a copy of his Nobel nomination letter, Trump was eager to announce a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas this week.

Taken aback by Netanyahu’s gesture, Trump backed off on pressuring the Israeli leader to reach an agreement with Hamas. And Netanyahu wins yet again by playing for time, as he has done since the Hamas attack on southern Israel in October 2023. The prime minister has repeatedly sabotaged negotiations to stay in power. He wants to keep his extremist government coalition intact so he can avoid early parliamentary elections, which his Likud party is likely to lose, and to block an independent investigation into his administration’s security failures that led up to the Hamas attack. But most of all, Netanyahu wants to save himself: he’s clinging to power to avoid a bribery and

© The Guardian