When the outgoing US President, Mr Clinton, brought Palestinian and Israeli negotiators in to the White House on December 23rd he knew that he had just one more throw of the dice.
Within a month he would exit stage left, his place in the history books sealed. Would it be a footnote in the bloody history of the Middle East or a glorious chapter?
Now time is running out for Mr Clinton, but not for him alone.
There's no doubt that Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, knows that his only chance of being re-elected in his country's looming elections will be to broker a peace deal that will be seen as securing Israel's security while not conceding too much to the Palestinians. And Mr Clinton has gambled that internal political pressures on the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mr Yasser Arafat, and the prospects of having to deal with a hardline alternative, Gen Ariel Sharon, will concentrate his mind and produce the necessary flexibility. The package presented by Mr Clinton as a framework for further discussions in what is supposed to be a 12-day blitz of intensive negotiations is by most accounts here a good summary of the ingredients that will be present in any final settlement. But it explicitly breaks a number of taboos for both sides, whether in terms of a renunciation by the Palestinians of their refugees' right of return to Israel, or Israeli acceptance of loss of sovereignty over the Temple Mount holy site and Palestinian jurisdiction over East Jerusalem.
The truth is that such heresies have been floating around for some time; the challenge was to bring them together in a package in which concessions would be seen as matching gains on all sides and to persuade politicians on both sides that the time had come to confront their own constituencies with home truths.
The message from Washington was simple. An Israeli diplomatic note of the December 23rd meeting makes clear: "These are the ideas of the President. If they are not accepted, they are not just off the table: they go with the President as he leaves office."
Mr Clinton has, as usual, invested huge personal energy in the initiative, working the phones to cajole and bully the players. According to the latest Time magazine he warned Mr Arafat during a call last week: "If you don't take this golden opportunity you will have no mention in history and coming generations of Palestinians will curse you."
But he was also prepared to meet the latter again to "clarify" the nature of the proposals, determined not to let the Palestinian leader walk away.
A peace agreement, marked by a handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Mr Arafat, was sealed on the lawn of the White House in October, 1993.
In 1997 the US contributed to securing a partial Israeli pullout from Hebron and a new, limited agreement was signed in Washington in October 1998. In July last year at Camp David new talks laid the basis, eventually, for the latest set of proposals. Mr Clinton's Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, has performed an exhausting shuttle diplomacy.
His international record and standing have been desperately important to the domestically troubled President, who in the last few months has scrambled unsuccessfully to see if he could wrap up some of the most intractable issues.
He came close to a breakthrough in North Korea, but had to cancel a planned trip because missile talks were not sufficiently advanced. But a hugely successful visit to Vietnam before Christmas, eclipsed at home by the Florida voting rows, put paid to the bitter legacy of that war. His visit to Ireland was good PR, but achieved little politically.
The administration did secure a deal with the UN which has put the US back in good standing with the organisation, thanks to the generosity of Mr Ted Turner.
Not all as neat and triumphant as the White House would have liked, but President Clinton will get credit for trying.