How would Kissinger solve the Israel-Hamas war today? Incrementally.

In Kissinger’s mind, it was always critical to avoid bringing too much passion to the pursuit of peace. He recognized that kings and emperors throughout history — and the American presidents who succeeded them — would be tempted to use their immense power to try to end conflicts. But that instinct needed to be resisted, Kissinger believed, because giving in to it was more likely to lead to more war. He called this “the paradox of peace.” Instead, Kissinger favored an incremental approach to peacemaking: a step-by-step process that would ameliorate conflict and buy time for the warring parties to come to terms with one another, learn to live together and, eventually, end their conflict.

This was his approach to Middle East peacemaking when, as secretary of state 50 years ago, he was confronted by the surprise Yom Kippur War, launched against Israel by Egypt and Syria. And it would probably have been his approach to the conflict that has broken out now between Hamas and Israel.

In 1973, Kissinger acted quickly to achieve a cease-fire (it took 16 days) and then launched a peace process — but one aimed at interim agreements, not end-of-conflict deals. Over the next three years, through tireless shuttle diplomacy, he negotiated two disengagement of forces agreements between Israel and Egypt and one between Israel and Syria. These had the effect of taking Egypt out of the conflict with Israel, stabilizing the border between Israel and Syria, and making it impossible for other Arab states to contemplate going back to war. The order he was able to create between Israel and its Arab state neighbors has been maintained ever since, eventually giving way to peace accords with a widening circle of Arab states, with Saudi Arabia next in line. It took some 40 years for most Arab states to come to terms with Israel, vindicating Kissinger’s reservations about rushing to final agreements before all the players were ready.

Not all the Middle East players were willing to conform to Kissinger’s incremental approach during the 1970s. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and, later, Menachem Begin were keen to end their conflict, but Kissinger refused to indulge them. Then, Jimmy Carter, true to the presidential peacemaking urges that Kissinger most feared, took up the challenge and succeeded in negotiating the breakthrough at Camp David that produced the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty.

I asked Kissinger recently whether he had any regrets about not trying for that peace. He said, “No. I was happy it happened, but I was always worried that if I pushed the parties too hard toward peace I would end up breaking the process.” It was that innate conservatism that wedded him to his step-by-step approach, even if it meant missing opportunities for breakthroughs.

The wisdom of Kissinger’s caution was borne out at Camp David II in 2000, when President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak tried and failed to impose a far-reaching end-of-conflict deal on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, leading to the outbreak of the second intifada. Israelis and Palestinians have been mired ever since in the most horrendous conflict.

What would Kissinger have done about today’s war in Gaza? His pursuit of order was focused on relations between states. Non-state, revolutionary actors such as Hamas had to be neutralized and denied the ability to disrupt the region. He would then look to the neighboring Arab states to work with Israel to reestablish a more durable order. He supported statehood for the Palestinians as a way to eventually resolve the conflict. But he believed in an incremental process in which the Palestinians would acquire “attributes of statehood” — building governing institutions that would eventually lead them to acquiring independence.

He would have been the first to warn against any attempt to end the conflict by imposing a two-state solution. Instead, he would have wanted a process that would begin by introducing Palestinian governance back into Gaza under a trusteeship in which Egypt and other Arab states would help maintain order. He would have had no objection to holding out the two-state solution as the eventual endpoint, as long as everyone understood it would need to be preceded by a process of building capabilities and confidence one step at a time.

Kissinger’s cautious, conservative statecraft helped create the mainstays of order between Israel and its Arab state neighbors that has stood the test of time. When Israelis and Palestinians eventually reconcile — unfortunately, a long time from now — it should be remembered that Henry Kissinger’s peacemaking diplomacy helped create the framework that made it possible.