Dhaka, Oct. 17 -- The denial of the Nobel peace prize to American President Donald Trump, a gesture which was expected for his role in ending several wars, does not detract from his creditable effort to secure peace in the Middle East. The cessation of the medieval war between Hamas and Israel would represent Trump's biggest foreign accomplishment in his second term. His first term was marked by the Abraham Accords.

As David E. Sanger reminds us in an excellent article in the New York Times, those accords normalised relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, "the first Arab states to recognise Israel in a quarter of a century. Sudan and Morocco joined later". "It was the fear that Saudi Arabia, home to many of the...