No peace with Israel without defining borders — Abbas

RAMALLAH/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — 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 during which there must be a complete halt to settlement activity,” he said.

The peace talks hit a major stumbling block in late March after Israel refused to comply with a commitment to release 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners, prompting Abbas to resume moves to seek international recognition.

Abbas has repeatedly insisted that Israel release the two dozen detainees plus hundreds more and agree to a freeze on settlement activity.

He has also demanded comprehensive talks on the issue of borders.

But a senior Israeli official said there would be no further talks unless Abbas renounced a reconciliation pact signed last week with Gaza’s Islamist Hamas rulers, under which the two rival Palestinian administrations would seek to form a new government of technocrats.

“The moment that Mahmoud Abbas gives up the alliance with Hamas, a murderous organisation which calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, we will be ready to return immediately to the negotiating table and discuss all subjects,” he told AFP.

On April 24, a day after the unity deal was announced, the Israeli security Cabinet said it would not negotiate with any Palestinian government backed by Hamas, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying Abbas would have to choose between peace with the Islamist movement, or peace with Israel.

The timing of the intra-Palestinian unity agreement was criticised as “unhelpful” by Washington, although US officials are understood to have a wait-and-see attitude to the new government, Haaretz newspaper reported.

“It is clear that the administration also has a ‘glass half full’ view of the controversial deal between the two rival Palestinian factions,” the paper said, quoting a top White House adviser who said it was not possible to make peace “with only a part of the Palestinian people”.

Vandalism

Vandals suspected of being Jewish extremists hit a mosque and a church in Israel, Israeli forces said Tuesday, in the latest of a string of racist and religious attacks.

Separately, security forces 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.

Security 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 tyres of several nearby cars had been slashed.

Security forces 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.

And in Nazareth, also in northern Israel, Israeli forces arrested a Jewish man in his 40s for threatening Roman Catholic Bishop Giacinto-Boulos Marcuzzo and members of his faith.

“A suspect arrived at [Marcuzzo’s] house and delivered a threatening letter” on Sunday, Rosenfeld told AFP, saying the man was arrested in the nearby town of Safed.

In the letter, the suspect said all Christians, “except Protestants and Anglicans”, should leave Israel by May 5 and said that if Marcuzzo and his community did not comply, they would all be “killed by the heavens” — a term for God.

There are also other Christian communities in Israel, such as the Eastern Orthodox, Armenians and Copts.

The letter, which was signed by “the Messiah, Son of David”, quoted Jewish sources who hold that Christianity is a form of idolatry and should be banned.

The suspect said the message must be distributed to the community through the media by 1700 GMT Tuesday, saying every hour of delay would “cost the lives of 100 Christian souls”.

Reacting to the vandalism, security spokesman Rosenfeld said “crimes committed for nationalist motives are extremely serious.”

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni also condemned the incidents.

“Whoever did these deeds is not part of my people,” she wrote on her Facebook page, pledging to “catch and punish” those responsible.

Speaking for the Catholic Church, Wadie Abu Nassar criticised the attacks as “very dangerous” and the Israeli establishment for its “lack of will” to act against those inciting them — “especially radical rabbis and preachers”.

“The security establishment is not acting sufficiently” to arrest and indict those responsible, he told AFP.

Politically motivated acts of vandalism with their trademark Hebrew graffiti are euphemistically known as “price tag” attacks.

Carried out by suspected Jewish extremists, thought to be predominantly teenagers, the attacks initially targeted Palestinians and their property. They have since grown in scope to include Christian sites and anyone opposed to the settlements.