Israelis were divided into three camps this week. One camp consisted of those in government who wanted US President Donald Trump’s visit to go off smoothly without jarring the bad old Israeli-Palestinian status quo. To smooth the way, they provided Trump with a few incentives, such as easing the passage of Palestinians from Jordan into Israel via the Allenby Bridge at all times and approving Palestinian building permit requests in the Israeli-controlled West Bank Area C, which were rejected in the past for no good reason. The second camp, which included the vestiges of the Israeli left wing, hoped Trump would succeed in launching a regional peace initiative to end 50 years of Israeli occupation. The third, which encompassed most citizens of Israel, did not believe that Trump would succeed where President Barack Obama and his predecessors failed — Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

What these three groups have in common is the prevailing belief that the key to ending the conflict lies in Trump’s pocket. But can one really expect Israelis and Palestinians to put their faith in a leader who does not even enjoy the trust of the majority of his fellow countrymen? Of what value is an agreement signed by a president under various investigations who is being kept at arm’s length even by top leaders of his own party? If American presidents who were at the top of their game were unable to stop Israel’s creeping annexation of Palestinian territory by building more and more settlements, how will a lame duck president manage to do so before he has even learned to walk?

To revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Trump will have to convince Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to renew negotiations from the point at which they derailed in the waning days of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s term in 2008. Top Palestinian officials have made it clear that under no circumstances will they agree to start negotiations from scratch. They have “been there, done that” during the 2013-14 negotiations, when Netanyahu sent his trusted attorney Yitzhak Molcho to baby-sit then-Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and make sure she didn’t present the Palestinians with even an iota of a permanent agreement map. What are the chances that Netanyahu will now present the Palestinians with Olmert’s proposed map, which gives the Palestinians 92% of the West Bank and part of Jerusalem?

As former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used to say, Israel doesn’t have a foreign policy, only a domestic political one. On May 22, TV presenter Geula Even-Saar essentially mapped out the government’s constraints in a biting question she put to Netanyahu’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan. Is Israel making these goodwill gestures to the Palestinians as a reward for their incitement? she challenged.