There is a real sense of satisfaction among the Palestinian leadership about the outcome of the Paris Middle East peace conference that took place Jan. 15. Nevertheless, in their usual manner, Palestinian representatives complained that the Obama administration prevented clearer resolutions on permanent status issues.

That said, a senior PLO official close to President Mahmoud Abbas, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, said outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry will be missed, given his honest ambition to advance Palestinian statehood.

The senior official said that the Palestinian leadership sees the Paris conference as part of a chain of events meant to place Palestinian statehood high on the international agenda of 2017: “The fact that there are very few conflict resolution issues in which more than 70 countries come to a consensus is very significant. Our national positions for a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as a capital have been adopted by the international community. The Arab Peace Initiative is the bridge between the Arab consensus and the international one.”

He claimed that the call to both parties — the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel — to negotiate directly is not taken seriously in Ramallah; neither are the economic and political incentives proposed by the conference participants, or the calls for confidence-building measures. The reason for this negative reaction lies with the Israeli annexation policies, preventing any possibility of a dialogue. Abbas believes that he was successful in convincing the international community that the Israeli government is the culprit behind the dangerous diplomatic stalemate.