When a senior aide to the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said this week that he was optimistic about the role that Donald Trump's son-in-law will play as a Middle East point man for the US administration, observers could be forgiven for raising their eyebrows.
After all, Jared Kushner is an inexperienced 36-year-old Orthodox Jew with a real estate background who converted upon his marriage to Ivanka Trump in 2009. His family has donated to Israeli settlement projects in the West Bank deemed illegal under international law and, having been in charge of foreign policy throughout last year's presidential campaign, Kushner is seen as the man behind the controversial proposal to move the US's Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to the divided city of Jerusalem, a step that some say would make a two-state solution practically impossible.
The primary drafter of Trump's speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March, which went down well with its audience, Kushner appears to be growing in popularity among Israel supporters in the US and in the country itself.
Last month, the right-wing Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said: "What we know: he's a really tough, smart guy, and we hope he will bring new energy to our region."
It is unusual for Palestinian officials to agree with the likes of Lieberman, but Husam Zomlot, Abbas's adviser for strategic affairs, echoed those comments.
"We hope that Mr. Kushner...will be able to do what all of his predecessors have tried to do, and will finally achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians," he said. "This is a position that requires a firm commitment to the US's longheld policies,"
"It's a good sign that President- elect Trump early on appointed one of his closest people, his son-in-law, to take this task," he added. "We don't just see the glass half-empty, but also half-full. We see the commitment by President-elect Trump to intervene as early as possible and spend political capital to resolve this issue."
Of course, both sides are – like most countries in the West – keen to appear open-minded and to gain influence with the incoming administration.
But Kushner is genuinely seen by those who have met him as highly intelligent, if a somewhat ignorant about the history of the region.
Needless to say, Trump himself was full of praise for Kushner in an interview with the British MP Michael Gove for The Times, and Germany's Bild newspaper at the weekend. "You know what, Jared is such a good kid, and he'll make a deal with Israel that no one else can," said the President-elect. "He's a natural, he's a great deal, he's a natural – you know what I was talking about, natural – he's a natural deal-maker. Everyone likes him."
But Trump is not the only one who believes that Kushner's total lack of diplomatic experience could be an advantage, as he may come with a fresh approach.
The veteran Middle East diplomat Dennis Ross, who served under the George H. W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations and who himself perhaps personifies the opposite problem of having too much experience in the region, has said of Kushner: "He clearly is someone who has a sense of Jewish identity, and he is someone who has a genuine attachment to Israel and understanding of the importance of the US-Israel relationship. People I know who know him describe him as smart, as someone who will clearly learn what he needs to learn, and will approach things thoughtfully, carefully, even analytically. So those would all be descriptors that I would hope would be accurate and emblematic of how he'll approach his responsibilities helping the new president."
Kushner has retained a law firm to navigate him through potential legal obstacles in the way of him working for his father-in-law, including a federal anti-nepotism law which states that "a public official may not appoint, employ, promote, advance or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official."
His legal counsel, WilmerHale, concluded last month that precedent had been set by Hillary Clinton, who won a court case in the 1990s in her fight to chair a national task force on health care reform for her husband, the then president Bill Clinton. That case found that the law bans appointments to agencies and departments, but not within the White House itself.
With Kushner apparently now having the all clear, the task before him could not be more important.
Fifty years exactly after the Six Day War and the beginning of the Occupation, the so-called "peace process" remains dormant.
For his father-in-law to defy cynical expectations, there could be no greater triumph for his administration than to gain that "deal" between Israel and the Palestinians. If that were to happen, then the "kid" will have done well indeed.
