RAMALLAH: There can be no peace with Israel without first defining the borders of a future Palestinian state, President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday.

“Since the creation of Israel, nobody knows what the borders are. We are determined to know our borders and theirs, without that there will be no peace,” he said as Washington’s nine-month deadline for reaching a peace deal expired, leaving the process in tatters.

In a televised address, Abbas laid out his conditions for returning to the crisis-hit peace talks with Israel, which have made no progress since they were launched on July 29 last year. “If we want to extend the negotiations, there has to be a release of prisoners ... a settlement freeze, and a discussion of maps and borders for three months.”

Meanwhile, vandals suspected of being Jewish extremists hit a mosque and a church in Israel, police said Tuesday, in the latest of a string of racist and religious attacks.

Separately, police arrested an Israeli man after he threatened the Roman Catholic bishop of Nazareth and demanded that Catholics leave the country or face God’s wrath.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP vandals had scrawled “Close mosques and not yeshivas” (Jewish seminaries) on the outer wall of a mosque in the small Arab town of Fureidis, near the northern port city of Haifa.

The tires of several nearby cars had been slashed.

Police were also investigating vandalism at Tabgha church on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, which was built on the site where Christians believe Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

Church officials said a group of religious Jews in their early teens had damaged crosses there and attacked clergy.