Saied: Trump's Mideast plan is 'injustice of the century'

Tunisian president says Palestine is not orchard to be subject of deal, criticises culture of defeat in Arab world.

TUNIS - President Kais Saied of Tunisia, an ally of the United States, said on Thursday that the new US plan for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is the "injustice of the century".

Tunisia is serving a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will speak in the Council in the next two weeks about the plan announced by US President Donald Trump on Tuesday alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump's plan envisages a two-state solution with Israel and a future Palestinian state but with strict conditions that Palestinians have baulked at.

Questions surfaced Thursday over whether Israel would immediately seek to annex parts of the illegally occupied West Bank, after Trump's controversial initiative that called for extending Israeli sovereignty to the area.

The plan, seen as overwhelmingly supportive of Israeli goals, has been universally rejected by Palestinians. 

President Mahmoud Abbas called Trump's blueprint an "onslaught against the national rights of the Palestinian people". It gives Israel a US green light to annex key parts of the occupied West Bank, including in the strategic and fertile Jordan Valley.

"It is the injustice of the century ... Palestine is not an orchard to be a subject of a deal," Saied said in an interview with Tunisian state-run television.

Saied also criticized what he described as "a culture of defeat in the Arab world".