Trump Attorney Nominates Jared Kushner for Nobel Peace Prize for Middle East Deals — and Twitter Has Thoughts

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Former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner now has a Nobel Peace Prize nomination just like his father-in-law, Donald Trump.

And it's inspiring the same kind of reactions among the public.

According to Reuters, Kushner and a top adviser, Avi Berkowitz, were nominated Sunday for the peace prize by attorney Alan Dershowitz, who cited the duo's work on helping normalize relations between Israel and Arab nations.

Dershowitz, a noted if controversial attorney and legal analyst who has worked with Jeffrey Epstein and O.J. Simpson, defended President Trump during his first impeachment trial.

Dershowitz was able to submit a nomination for Kushner and Berkowitz because he is a Harvard Law School professor emeritus. Academics, like lawmakers and scientists, can nominate others for Nobels.

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Announced in September 2020, "the Abraham Accords" worked to establish diplomatic relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Trump was also repeatedly — unsuccessfully — nominated for the prize during his time in office. One of his nominations cited his administration's work in brokering the historic peace deal between Israel and the UAE.

In a letter to the Nobel committee making his nomination, Dershowitz alluded to possible blowback for nominating Kushner — who faced intense scrutiny as a key Trump aide, given his lack of government qualifications — but wrote that the award was not meant to be a popularity contest.

"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," Dershowitz wrote, as reported by Reuters.

A nomination is no guarantee of a win, of course: Hundreds of people are put forward for the peace prize each year.

That didn't stop social media users from weighing in on the news. One user, referencing the number of voters for Joe Biden over Trump, tweeted that "I can think of approximately 81 million people who deserve the Nobel Peace Prize before Jared Kushner."

Wrote another: "Jared Kushner doesn't deserve the prize found in a crackerjack box, much less the Nobel Peace Prize."

In a statement to PEOPLE, Kushner said he was honored to be nominated.

"In 2020 we brokered peace agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, the first such agreements in over 25 years," he said. "Thanks to these agreements the region is on a new trajectory that will improve the lives of millions of Israelis and Arabs. Thank you to President Trump and the courageous leaders in the region for making this breakthrough possible."

Berkowitz echoed those words in his own statement.

"I would like to thank President Trump and Jared Kushner for having me on this team, and Professor Dershowitz for the nomination," he said. "I would also like to recognize the many negotiators that Jared and I had the privilege to work with in the Middle East. Peace is a beautiful thing."

The next prize is set to be awarded in October.

The Abraham Accords, while lauded by the former administration and its supporters as historic, drew some criticism as a success on a much smaller scale than the original goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

A proposed deal by the Trump administration between Israel and the Palestinians had previously been dismissed by the latter group.

Some experts said the normalization agreements formalized what had been previously behind-closed-doors relations between the countries, as the region reorients to face Iran — a common concern.

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"They deserve credit, even though they jumped on a bus that had already left the station," longtime diplomatic adviser Aaron David Miller told The Washington Post.

Nonetheless, one Palestinian pollster told the Post, "There's been a very emotional reaction on the part of the Palestinian public, a huge level of anger that the Arabs would leave them to their fate."

Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, appear to be putting down roots in South Florida, having leased a Miami condo after purchasing a multimillion-dollar plot of land nearby.

The Trump administration had been tight-lipped about the couple's post-White House plans after the 2020 election, though a source told PEOPLE that Kushner's international connections and Ivanka's work on women’s and family could prove integral to their future plans.

The source shrugged off the idea they would be followed by lasting backlash — evidenced, for example, by a scathing essay in Vanity Fair by Ivanka’s childhood best friend.

"They're not like a traditional family that immediately needs to figure out their next move," the source said in the fall. "They gave four years of extremely hard work and energy. They've got a young family, they've got a lot to figure out — where they want to live and what avenues they want — but there's no rush."