Following President Donald Trump’s announcement that Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first phase of a peace plan, The New York Times’ veteran national security correspondent David E. Sanger suggested that the development could mark Trump’s “pathway to the Nobel Peace Prize.”
“For Mr. Trump, success in this venture is the ultimate test of his self-described goal as a deal maker and a peacemaker — and a pathway to the Nobel Peace Prize he has so openly coveted,” Sanger wrote Wednesday.
Sanger described the potential agreement as “the biggest diplomatic accomplishment of his second term,” though he warned that “peace in the region is still far from guaranteed.” He noted that Trump’s breakthrough, if it holds, could stand alongside the work of the four previous American presidents who have won the Nobel Peace Prize.
“If the peace plan moves forward, Mr. Trump may have as legitimate a claim to that Nobel as the four American presidents who have won the peace prize in the past, though with less bombast and lobbying,” Sanger observed.
Still, he cautioned, “Much could go wrong in coming days, and in the Middle East it often does. The ‘peace’ deal Mr. Trump heralded on Truth Social on Wednesday evening may look more like another temporary pause in a war that started with Israel’s founding in 1948, and has never ended.”
Recognition Amid Reluctance
While maintaining his skepticism, Sanger acknowledged that if Trump manages to sustain the cease-fire and move the plan toward permanence, it would be “an extraordinary step toward the kind of peace plan Mr. Trump, and his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., have pressed to accomplish, despite many diversions down dark holes.”
He added that “if Mr. Trump can get Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to withdraw troops from Gaza City and give up on his plan to take control of the shattered remains of Gaza, if he can stop the carnage that has killed 1,200 people in Israel and more than 60,000 Palestinians, he will have done what many before him tried: outmaneuvered a difficult and now isolated ally.”
Sanger also recalled the Abraham Accords — which normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and other Arab nations — as Trump’s “best international accomplishment” of his first term. Yet, he suggested, the current peace deal “is an even bigger accomplishment,” if it endures.
The piece credited Trump and his advisers for restraining Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the conflict’s civilian toll threatened Israel’s global standing — damage that Sanger argued “may take a generation or more to repair.”
Still, the veteran correspondent warned that “it is far from clear that the conflict is truly ending,” pointing to the challenge of persuading Hamas to disarm and relinquish control over Gaza.
A Rare Note of Praise from a Longtime Critic
Sanger’s cautiously admiring tone marks a departure from the broader editorial posture of The New York Times, which has maintained a long and often adversarial relationship with Donald Trump. During both his campaigns and presidencies, the paper has been a consistent skeptic of his policies and character — drawing frequent rebukes from Trump, who has derided it as “failing” and “fake news.”
Though Sanger’s reporting stops short of endorsement, it nonetheless represents one of the rare moments when The Times has acknowledged Trump’s potential for a historic diplomatic breakthrough — even as it hedges that recognition with doubt about the durability of peace in the Middle East.
