Tel Aviv, Israel ? Under pressure to end three years of fighting, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday that Israel cannot hold on to all of the West Bank and Gaza but also warned Palestinians that unless they moderate their demands he might take permanent hold of some of the land they seek for a state.

“You do not have unlimited time,” he told a news conference, addressing the Palestinians. “There is a limit to our patience.”

Sharon’s talk about possible concessions was aimed at an increasingly impatient gallery of critics, ranging from U.S. officials to bickering coalition partners to ordinary Israelis despondent over the decline of their living standards and personal security.

The Palestinians responded with a sharp rebuke.

“This is an unprecedented, arrogant statement. It is rude, and it lacks any vision,” said Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath. “He should declare that he is committed to the ‘road map’ and implement all the Israeli commitments that are in this map.”

Sharon said he remained committed to the U.S.-backed plan, which both sides accepted in principle in June, although Israel attached more than a dozen reservations. The plan calls for a Palestinian state by 2005.

But Sharon made clear that he would not fully abide by a road map requirement that Israel dismantle the scores of West Bank settlement outposts, many of them no more than a few trailer homes. He said some outposts have “supreme security value” and that “what is necessary will remain” — a statement Palestinians blasted as a blatant violation of the plan.

New Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia’s goal appears to be ending the violence and then putting pressure on Sharon to come up with a concrete proposal. The road map does not spell out details such as the exact borders of a Palestinian state.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia briefs the media after a meeting at his office in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Under pressure to end three years of fighting, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday that Israel cannot hold on to all of the West Bank and Gaza.