Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Wednesday that Israel spent 40 years investing its energy on Judea and Samaria – in vain.

"We invested the emotional resources and our thoughts in 'how to build Judea and Samaria' but history made it clear to us that the state of Israel has other realistic and practical alternatives," Olmert said in a speech at the Ashalim students' village. "The future of the state of Israel will not be in our mixing with the Palestinians but in the empty parts of the land that are thirsting for our entrepreneurial and inventive drive," he added.

"For forty years we invested the energy of our souls in order to build up a place from which, in retrospect, we see that the land shall not be built. I say this carefully, with respect and circumspection," he said. "I have great appreciation for the people who built their homes in those places and in the past I, too, supported them."