The squeaking of hinges is almost audible as the much-vaunted Middle East "window of opportunity" for peace swings shut.
Tomorrow, President Clinton leaves office after two terms during which the attempt to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty has arguably taken up more presidential time than any other foreign policy issue.
And yet, despite the deadline of his departure, the two sides have failed in recent weeks, during interminable negotiations interspersed with gunfire, to make any new headway whatsoever, much less to finalise the elusive permanent peace accord.
Negotiations continued yesterday in Tel Aviv, and the Israeli cabinet was last night discussing a proposal by the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, for a possible new series of intensive, high-level talks.
Israel's Foreign Minister, Mr Shlomo Ben-Ami, who met Mr Arafat in Cairo on Wednesday, came away with the firm impression, he said, that "the Palestinians really wish to exhaust the possibilities of this process with us."
The fact remains, however, that the two key issues that have blocked a peace treaty - the status of Jerusalem, and Palestinian refugee rights of return - remain as hotly disputed as they ever were. The new Palestinian intifada, which began last September, rolls ever onward, with heavy shooting exchanges around Jewish settlements in both Gaza and the West Bank yesterday, and reports last night that an Israeli teenager had been found murdered in Ramallah.
And, for all the talking, the negotiators have been unable to finalise even a document that would have summed up the points on which they have found solutions, and those still in dispute, to serve as a basis for further negotiations during the Bush administration.
The next deadline - arguably the final nail in the peacemakers' coffin - comes on February 6th, when Gen Ariel Sharon, hardline leader of Israel's opposition Likud party, seems likely to oust Mr Ehud Barak from the Prime Minister's office.
Advance word on the weekly opinion polls, to be published here today, is that they still show Gen Sharon 18 to 20 per cent clear of Mr Barak despite the best efforts of Mr Barak's advertising gurus, in nightly TV campaign commercials, to deride Gen Sharon's assertion that he can lead Israel to peace.
Mr Dan Meridor, one of Israel's most respected politicians, who hails from the centre-right of the spectrum but has been supportive of Mr Barak, probably spoke for many Israelis when announcing that he greatly doubted whether Gen Sharon, or anyone else for that matter, could reach a peace accord with the Palestinians so long as they insisted on a right of return to Israel for millions of refugees.
Yet he would be voting for the Likud leader anyway, he said, because he objected to the fact that Mr Barak had been willing to continue negotiating with the Palestinians "under fire", and, more critically, because he objected to Mr Barak's offer to divide Jerusalem with the Palestinians.