Trump moves closer to Middle East peace — and maybe the Nobel Prize

ANALYSIS: Even if Trump succeeds in the Middl East where his predecessors failed, a Nobel prize would still be a longshot.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump likes to enumerate the peace deals he says he forged — seven at last count.

But two that have eluded him potentially mean the most to his legacy and his dogged pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize.

The first is the Russia-Ukraine war, which is no closer to ending now than when Trump took office in January. The other is Israel’s conflict with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

Here, he may have just achieved a breakthrough.

Up against a Sunday deadline that Trump had set, Hamas said Friday that it would meet a major condition that the president laid out in his 20-point plan for the war’s end: releasing all the hostages, living or dead. Hamas’ caveat was that “the field conditions for the exchange are met.”