President Barack Obama is leaving office in one year’s time. On his record he can include changing the rules of the game in current international relations toward an assertive collective diplomacy in coordination with major world powers — Russia, China and the European Union — leaving the use of force as a last resort. Obama has put an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, achieved a historic agreement curbing Iran’s nuclear capacity and, it seems, is making progress on arranging the sharing of power in Syria.

But there is one area in which the Obama administration failed to make progress: resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His efforts were blocked by the Israeli settlement policy and by the weakness of the Palestinian Authority (PA). In his recent foreign policy review on Jan. 22 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Secretary of State John Kerry did not say a single word about this issue.

This leaves the Israeli-Palestinian relationship in a volatile situation. Violence and terror are rampant, and so are the rumors in the West Bank concerning a possible breakdown of the PA and an eventual armed intifada. The question is: Should Obama, in his last year in office, give up on the two-state solution? In a Jan. 21 press conference with Israeli correspondents at the Muqata, President Mahmoud Abbas called on the international community to convene an international peace conference on a two-state solution based on the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. He also asked for a freeze of Israeli settlement construction and the release of 36 pre-Oslo Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israel. These ideas became the basis for the French initiative of Jan. 29 in favor of convening of an international conference. French and Palestinian diplomats held close consultations on the initiative over the course of January.

A senior PA official with access to the president told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that this is the last diplomatic offer Abbas would make to the international community. He said, “Abbas is a man of moderation and is probably the last leader in this situation to prefer diplomacy over an armed uprising or struggle. The US, and not only France, would do right to take Abbas up on his offer, since the alternative is a fundamental destabilization of the regional situation.”