They do not shake hands in public. They will not talk to each other unless their American chaperones are present. They do their best to avoid bumping into one another in the hotel where they are all staying.
Three days into what was billed as the most intensive effort ever made to broker a peace treaty between Israel and Syria, the US State Department spokesman, Mr James Rubin, informed the media yesterday that the talks at Shepherdstown, West Virginia, were "chugging along" but that the hope now was to get them "on to a fast track". Once again, President Clinton's personal intervention has been requested.
Mr Rubin's assessment hardly squares with the stark public absence of warmth at the formal White House ceremony reopening the discussions last month, or at the more informal opening to this week's talks.
Then President Clinton attempted to engage the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, and the Syrian Foreign Minister, Mr Faruq al-Shara, in conversation as they staged a for-camera stroll into the hotel.
The US President found that only Mr Barak was willing to chat; Mr al-Shara maintained a purse-lipped silence.
The Israelis, of course, are more than willing to shake hands, eat together, stroll together, meet face-to-face. It is the Syrians, Mr Barak's aides explain, who are cold-shouldering them.
True enough, sources in the Syrian delegation counter, we are not shaking hands. But don't be fooled. It is the Israelis who are harming these negotiations, because they won't so much as even talk about the top item on the agenda - the demarcation of the border between our countries.
Mr Clinton was on his way back to Shepherdstown last night, and will probably persuade the wary protagonists to get down to serious business.
Both sides will doubtless assure their respective peoples that it is they who have held firm, the other side that has compromised.
The fact is, of course, that although Israel and Syria are cheerfully blaming each other for what both insist is slow progress, nobody is talking about packing their bags and going home.
What the delegations are engaged in, it appears, is an exercise in public relations for the people watching in Jerusalem and Damascus.
The Syrian negotiators are working to convince their public - whose support President Hafez al-Assad needs if his dynasty is to be maintained by his son Bashar - that they are holding out for the return of every inch of the Golan Heights.
And the Israeli team is aiming to persuade a sceptical electorate that these are phenomenally difficult negotiations, at which Mr Barak is insisting on cast-iron security arrangements to minimise the dangers of any territorial compromise.
Working groups at the talks have actually begun discussing water allocation and security arrangements. The Syrians are said to have agreed to demilitarise the Golan and permit a "symbolic" Israeli presence at an early warning station atop the Heights.
They are also said to have confirmed various key elements of normalised diplomatic relations.
But neither delegation has much interest in playing up such progress as yet. For now, both sides want the folks back home to know how arduous a process this is, and so how prized an accord, should it ultimately emerge, will be.
Yesterday, in a separate development, Israel completed the handover of another 5 per cent of the occupied West Bank to Palestinian control, with another 6 per cent slice to be given over two weeks from now. At that point the Palestinian Authority will have full or partial control over some 40 per cent of the West Bank.
Both sides have pledged to try to reach the outline of a permanent peace treaty by next month, and a final deal by September.