If the raw materials for predicting the Middle East policy of President-elect Donald Trump consist of his pronouncements on the issue during the election campaign, he will watch the Israeli-Palestinian bonfire from the sidelines, at best. At worst, the businessman, devoid of any diplomatic training or experience, will fuel the flames with gallons of gasoline. Trump’s victory in the Republican presidential primaries, and surprising victory in the general election, indicate that the man is far from being a pyromaniac. He will invariably also be quick to understand the rules of the game in the Middle East. As an ambassador who served in the Middle East for many years once told me, “We have learned that your region is like an automatic car with two gears — drive and reverse. There’s no neutral or park. If we don’t advance, we retreat.”

At the start of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, people also said that he would not go near the quagmire of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He was dragged in, however, by the 1982 Lebanon war and the evasive tactics adopted by the right-wing Israeli government to avoid autonomy talks with the Palestinians. Reagan ended up presenting Prime Minister Menachem Begin with a peace plan based on an Israeli withdrawal from the territories it had captured in 1967. After a furious Begin rejected the blueprint, Reagan lifted the US boycott of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and launched talks with its leader, Chairman Yasser Arafat.

Later, people said that the conservative Bush presidents would not go anywhere near the Middle East. President George H.W. Bush went to war against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990, forced right-wing Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's participation in the 1991 Madrid peace conference, and made Shamir choose between expanded US economic aid and expanded West Bank settlements. President George W. Bush initiated the 2003 road map to Middle East peace, which required Israel to completely freeze settlement construction, and contributed to the decision by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw from the Gaza Strip two years later, in 2005.

On the other hand, it is hard to point to any significant contributions by Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Syria or Lebanon. It is too soon to assess the endurance of the nuclear agreement with Iran pursued by Obama, but a President Trump, unlike the candidate Trump, is highly unlikely to opt for the alternative — a war in the Middle East that could deteriorate into a nuclear conflagration. Trump’s affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iran’s partner in the war in Syria, may herald calm on that front.