Kushner, deputy nominated for Nobel Peace Prize over Israel deals

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Jared Kushner, the White House adviser under former President Trump, was nominated Sunday for the Nobel Peace Prize over his efforts in negotiating deals between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and other countries in the region over a hectic four-month period last year.

Reuters reported that Kushner and Avi Berkowitz, his former deputy, were nominated by Alan Dershowitz, the professor emeritus of Harvard Law School. Reuters called the deals the "most significant diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East in 25 years," and many Trump supporters said the media downplayed their magnitude in order to hurt his chances at reelection.

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The Trump administration brokered peace agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Kushner told Fox News in October that there have been "people in Washington for 30, 40 years" who were "never able to work on a single foreign transaction."

He joked that peace deals are "much harder than President Trump is making them look."

Kushner said "people have been very critical of the president over the last three years for whatever he does… but the reality is he’s taken a different approach on how to deal with Washington, he took a different approach in the Middle East and he’s put up results."

Bahrain joined the United Arab Emirates at a festive White House ceremony in the fall marking the "Abraham Accords," a pair of U.S.-brokered diplomatic pacts with Israel. While the UAE’s deal with Israel formally established ties, the agreement with Bahrain was less detailed and included a mutual pledge to follow suit.

TRUMP DECLARES 'DAWN OF A NEW MIDDLE EAST' AS HE PRESIDES OVER SIGNING OF HISTORIC DEALS

The Palestinians severed ties with the Trump White House, accusing it of being unfairly biased toward Israel. U.S. officials have in turn cultivated ties between Israel and Arab states, hoping to increase pressure on the Palestinians to reduce past demands in peace talks.

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The Reuters report said that President Biden is in the process of reviewing Trump’s deals and mentioned that it is unclear if Trump’s exit from the White House will hurt Kushner’s chances of receiving the prize.

Dershowitz told Fox News in a statement, "The Nobel Peace Prize is not for popularity. Nor is it an assessment of what the international community may think of those who helped bring about peace. It is an award for fulfilling the daunting criteria set out by Alfred Nobel in his will. These men, and the Abraham accords, they helped produce, meet these criteria better than any other person or groups eligible for the award."

Fox News' Talia Kaplan and the Associated Press contributed to this report