Austin American Statesman · Austin, Texas · 28 February 2003
CP-2003-022
Sharon sets own pace for peace talks
Despite U.S. call for quick action, prime minister says his first priority is economy
By Margaret Coker / INTERNATIONAL STAFF
Transcribed from the clipping
JERUSALEM — Introducing his new government, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon set tough conditions Thursday for peace talks with Palestinians, even as President Bush urged him to work quickly toward Palestinian independence.
In a strongly worded speech delivered to the Israeli parliament, Sharon appeared to put his government at loggerheads with the U.S.-backed plan — outlined by Bush in a speech Wednesday night — to establish a Palestinian state by 2005. While Sharon conveyed a hope for peace, he didn’t offer details about how to achieve it.
“The people of Israel strive for peace, and I am convinced that, in exchange for true peace, there is readiness for painful concessions,” he said. But Sharon said that deep reforms in the Palestinian leadership would be required before he considers negotiations.
Furthermore, he said renewing peace talks would require special Cabinet approval, a difficult hurdle since two parties in his four-party coalition, the National Religious Party and National Union, oppose Palestinian independence. Some National Union leaders have even advocated exiling the 3 million Palestinians to Egypt and annexing the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Israel.
Sharon also said Palestinians must drop their longtime demand for the “right of return” to parts of Israel from which they were displaced during the 1948 Mideast war. He also said that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city under Jewish control. Palestinians want their capital in east Jerusalem.
How this transcription was made
Read from the scan by a machine looking at the image of the page, not by optical character recognition and not by a person. The clipping carries no masthead or date line, so its date and newspaper rest on the record it arrived with, not on anything visible in the scan.
Context added by this archive
Date check: No masthead, folio or printed date appears on this clipping — the trim begins just below a rule at the top of the page and nothing names the paper. The story says the speech was delivered “Thursday”, consistent with a Friday paper; Feb. 28, 2003 was a Friday. That is the only internal support for the date.
Cite this clipping
"Sharon sets own pace for peace talks," Austin American Statesman, 28 February 2003. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2003-022. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2003-022
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2003-022.
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