In this competitive age of tweets and blogs, editors increasingly demand that reporters immediately explain what developments mean, that they do it decisively and authoritatively. I hear it all the time from frantic journalists who desperately try to make sense of a confusing Middle East.

Israeli journalists - and I know because I was one of them - are the masters of hyperbolic instant analysis. We see it almost every day. When reporters are well versed in the facts, such analysis can be eye opening. When they are not, it achieves the opposite objective.

It seems to me that this is the case with the instant analyses following Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's press conference in Jerusalem Saturday. In the rush to make headlines, some basic facts were overlooked.

Yes, the Secretary referred to Prime Minister Netanyahu's proposal on settlement construction as "unprecedented," and yes, she has not used that depiction in the past. But that is because Netanyahu's proposal really is - as far as I understand it - unprecedented. If Clinton is right and Netanyahu is committing that there will be a moratorium on housing-starts, this is, indeed, unprecedented.

And, yes, the Secretary's focus was on resuming negotiations ASAP.

But does that mean that the Obama administration has changed its position that Israel should freeze all settlement construction? Does that mean that Obama and his aides are reneging on an alleged position that a freeze is a precondition to negotiations? Does that mean that Obama, Clinton and Special Envoy George Mitchell are somehow softening their position on brokering Middle East peace? The answers are no, no and no.

The administration still holds that Israel must stop all settlement activity. That has not changed and will not change.

The administration has always contended that its objective is to resume negotiations as soon as possible. It has never said that a settlement freeze is a precondition to negotiations. By the way, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also said several times - once in an answer to a question that I asked him during his visit to Washington in the spring - that he is not posing preconditions to negotiations with Israel. True, Abbas and his aides also said other things, but they clearly prefer eating grapes to fighting with the vineyard's guard, as an Arabic proverb says.

The administration's focus on negotiations is correct. And there is every reason to expect that once negotiations resume, this administration will play an active brokering role.

True, negotiations will not start with the kind of game-changing development that the administration was hoping for (a quick and comprehensive settlement freeze and dramatic steps toward normalization with Israel by Arab governments). But talks will resume and they will focus on the core issues for a final resolution to the conflict. They will be shepherded by the most resolute and determined U.S. administration in recent history, and hopefully they will produce results.

Let's have patience.

As another Arabic proverb says: "If patience is bitter, then its results are sweet."