Maybe it's naivety. Or complacency. Or plain weariness. But as the ABC team - Messrs Arafat, Barak and Clinton - set about their self-proclaimed "historic" Middle East summitry far away across the Atlantic, this doesn't feel like the moment of truth.
This area is never dull and never free of tension. But, right now, on the Palestinian side of this divide, there's none of the desperate tension that characterised, say, the six years of Intifada, from 1987 to 1993.
Palestinian pollsters report that only 32 per cent of their public is expressing strong support for Yasser Arafat's leadership, while 66 per cent believes that September 13th, Mr Arafat's promised day of statehood-come-what-may, will pass without a deal. And yet the Islamic radicals are conspicuous by their quiet. Even the latest incident of accidental killing by Israeli soldiers opening fire from a Gaza checkpoint earlier this week on a Palestinian family, in the mistaken belief that shots were coming from their vehicle, sparked only small protests.
On the Israeli side, last night as most nights lately, right-wing elements posted banners at major crossroads accusing Ehud Barak of "losing the country". Left-wing activists mounted a pro-Barak rally outside his official residence. On Monday night, as the Prime Minister helicoptered over them en route to the airport for his flight to the US, small convoys of right-wingers drove along the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway with placards proclaiming, "Warning: Border Ahead of You" stuck to their vehicles, a message intended to highlight the possible reduction of Israel, as a result of a peace deal, to a scale something like its pre-1967 size.
But even though Mr Barak arrived at Camp David wounded by a Knesset defeat in a no-confidence motion, indeed preserved in government only by a technicality that requires an absolute majority in the parliament to bring him down, the opposition protests feature little of the vitriol and attempts to delegitimise the Prime Minister that characterised the rallies against Yitzhak Rabin's leadership in 1994 and 1995.
The settlers, some of whom fear being required to leave their homes in the occupied West Bank, are worried and indignant. Some of their leaders are on hunger strike. But their anger, right now at least, stops short of desperation.
The pessimists on both sides warn that this summit may end in failure, and that failure will inevitably breed violence. And perhaps they are right. And what we're feeling now is the calm before another dreadful storm.
But calm it is. Calm enough for Sufian Abu Zeideh, a deputy minister in the Palestinian Authority, to be gently explaining on a news show yesterday afternoon why Mr Arafat simply cannot moderate Palestinian claims on Jerusalem and refugee rights, and have his arguments smilingly acknowledged by the Israeli presenter, and have her congratulate him on his new deputy ministerial appointment, and then apologise when he tells her he's had the job for 18 months.
Maybe it's a calm that will gradually dissipate as September 13th draws nearer, and the realisation dawns that no accord is in sight. Or just maybe it's the calm before the deal - a calm of reluctant, grudging moderation on both sides, recognition that the time has come to compromise.
But surely not. That really would be naivety.