By yesterday evening, news that the London conference had come to a messy, inconclusive end had yet to reach Kalandia refugee camp.
It was hardly surprising as no one was aware the negotiations had even begun. Among this clutter of concrete homes on Jerusalem's dusty outer rim, the very words "peace process" have long ago dropped from the daily vocabulary.
Khaled, a 20-year-old refugee, received the news with indifference. "It's no surprise. There can never be a peace deal with Netanyahu. We will give up everything and he will say it is still not enough," he said.
He has been in trouble with the Israeli police enough times in the last few years to keep his family name to himself. Khaled's opinion has clout. With a handful of stones each, he and a few hundred teenagers from the 7,100-strong Kalandia camp can turn the twisting road from Jerusalem north to the Palestinian city of Ramallah into a war-zone in minutes.
This - one of the most radical of the many Palestinian camps - is the West Bank's hair-trigger. "The second Intifada is coming, bigger than the first. This time it will be with guns," Khaled swore, voicing the implicit threat which hung over London and all the other failed negotiations of the past year.
"Yasser Arafat often tells visitors from Western Europe that the looming revolt will make the first Intifada "look like a picnic". It is a threat often made, but no one on the West Bank is sure when it might become reality. Bassem Al-Mouhtaseb, a Palestinian businessman with a shop nearby on the Ramallah road has an active interest in the question.
"I would give it a year," he said. "People will wait to see if a Palestinian state will be declared. If there is no state, then maybe there will be no Palestinian Authority and Hamas will take over."
Hamas, the radical Islamic Resistance Movement, is fast winning young converts to its policy of total rejection of Oslo in favour of continued struggle against Israel. While the London meeting got under way, the Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was in Iran, where he was greeted like a head of state.
A brief period of cohabitation following the elderly cleric's release from prison last September has come to a bitter end and last month, the Islamist leader denounced Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) as an "Israeli tool". Even an aspiring capitalist like Mr Mouhtaseb, a natural Fatah follower, is having grave doubts in the leadership.
"Why do we ask for 30 per cent, then 13 per cent?" he asked. "This is all our land."
Using capital amassed in Jordan, Mr Mouhtaseb set up his clothes shop three years ago, thinking there would be a commercial boom after the Oslo agreement. Like many other middle-class Palestinians, he is disillusioned, resigned and thinking about leaving the country.
"Since Bibi [Netanyahu] came, the clock has stopped, the minutes stopped, the years stopped. Bibi is doing nothing for Israelis. The PA is doing nothing for the Palestinians," Mr Mouhtaseb said.
Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian political analyst, does not anticipate an imminent eruption of unrest following the uninspiring end of the London talks, as Mr Arafat's Fatah party was still in control.
"Nothing can happen on the streets without Fatah encouraging it, and Arafat is very cautious when it comes to using public unrest. He will do it only when he feels it will happen with or without him," Mr Khatib said.
He added that Hamas appeared to keeping a low profile at present, to avoid a comprehensive PA crack down on their grassroots. "But there is an accumulation of frustration. When this frustration will reach a point of explosion, no one can tell."