Ehud Olmert writes in the Washington Post that the present US focus on a freeze on settlement construction is a mistake. In words of one syllable (save for that last word) he's wrong, and this is why.
The building of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land is at once a symbol and the reality itself of Israeli injustice against the Palestinians. It has a significance within that conflict of the same gravity that refusal on the other side to recognize Israel has. It's all very well for Olmert to talk about 'recogniz[ing] the realities that have developed over 40 years' but these realities have no more legitimacy than do the realities of anti-Semitic attitudes on the Palestinian side and terrorist violence directed against Jews. To signal an earnest desire for peace both parties to the process need to be willing to move away from positions and actions that feed further conflict by persisting with manifest wrongs.