Why is US President Donald Trump carrying on with his State visit to Beijing this week on May 14? I wouldn’t if I were him.

It also shows that he is surrounded by incompetent officials. Any competent advisor would advise him against undertaking this trip.

He goes as the leader of a “defeated” nation, against a foe on which the United States has imposed the stiffest sanctions for 47 years. He will be viewed by the Chinese as the President that ended the American empire.

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He thinks he is going as a conquering hero and can wow the Chinese with his empty boasts that America won a huge victory and destroyed Iran. He will be met by President Xi and the Chinese leadership with polite smiles and smirks of the greatest disrespect.

If he has any EQ, he will know that his treatment in Beijing is going to be brutal. The Chinese may even gift him the symbolic white flag of surrender. You will see that in this summit, the US will be very much the junior partner.

Iran will never give this defeated President the satisfaction of a peace agreement which he so desperately needs, and is begging for, before his trip to Beijing. They will make sure he goes to Beijing as a defeated man.

Iran is not after a peace deal, but the total and comprehensive defeat of America as the global hegemon. Iran will see to it that the US gets out of the Middle East totally so that Israel is isolated and the Greater Israel project totally destroyed.

Security architecture shifting
Even as I write, the security architecture of the Middle East is shifting rapidly. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Oman are shifting their allegiances increasingly toward Iran, Russia and China.

Fifty-five years of being America’s poodles are coming to an end. These countries have realised that the US is an unreliable partner and cannot guarantee their security.

The stupid countries are the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, which still hitch their wagons to the Americans and Israel. They have dug their own graves.

History has never witnessed another event as dramatic as the Iran war, where a global power has lost power and prestige in such a short period of 4 months.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform.

I have wrestled with what to say in this urgent moment, long yearned for and that often appeared beyond reach during these last 15 hideous months.

One of the questions that I grappled with was this: What could I possibly share with readers that would even remotely capture the meaning and profundity of an apparent agreement to stop the wholesale massacre of Palestinians?

I had not suffered. My home is intact. My family and I are alive and well. We are warm, together and safe.

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So, the other pressing dilemma I confronted was: Is it my place to write at all? This space should be reserved, I thought, for Palestinians to reflect on the horrors they have endured and what is to come.

Their voices will, of course, be heard here and elsewhere in the days and weeks ahead. My voice, in this context, is insignificant and, under these grievous circumstances, borders on being irrelevant.

Still, if you and, in particular, Palestinians will oblige me, this is what I have to say:

I think that there are four words that each, in their own way, bear some significance to Wednesday’s happy news that the guns are poised to go silent.

The first and perhaps most fitting word is “relief”.

There will be ample time and opportunity for the “experts” to draw up their predictable scorecards of the “winners” and “losers” and the broader short- and long-term strategic implications of Wednesday’s deal.

There will, as well, be ample time and opportunity for more “experts” to consider the political consequences of Wednesday’s deal in the Middle East, Europe and Washington, DC.

My preoccupation, and I suspect the preoccupation of most Palestinians and their loved ones in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, is that peace has arrived finally.

How long it will last is a question best posed tomorrow. Today, let us all revel in the relief that is a dividend of peace.

Palestinian boys and girls are dancing with relief. After months of grief, loss and sadness, joy has returned. Smiles have returned. Hope has returned.

Let us enjoy a satisfying measure of relief, if not pleasure, in that.

There is relief in Israel, too.

The families of the surviving captives will soon be reunited with the brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, they have longed to embrace again.

They will, no doubt, require care and attention to heal the wounds to their minds, souls and bodies.

That will be another, most welcomed, dividend of peace.

The next word is “gratitude”.

Those of us who, day after dreadful day, have watched — bereft and helpless as a ruthless apartheid state has gone methodically about reducing Gaza to dust and memory — owe our deepest gratitude to the brave, determined helpers who have done their best to ease the pain and suffering of besieged Palestinians.

We owe our everlasting gratitude to the countless anonymous people, in countless places throughout Gaza and the West Bank, who, at grave risk and at the expense of so many young, promising lives, put the welfare of their Palestinian brothers and sisters ahead of their own.

We must be grateful for their selflessness and courage. They did their duty. They walked into the danger. They did not retreat. They stood firm. They held their ground. They rebuffed the purveyors of death and destruction who tried to erase their pride and dignity.

They reminded the world that humanity will prevail despite the occupier’s efforts to crush it.

The third word is “acknowledge”.

The world must acknowledge the steadfast resistance of Palestinians.

The occupier’s aim was to break the will and spirit of Palestinians. That has been the occupier’s intent for the past 75 years.

Once again, the occupier has failed.

Palestinians are indefatigable. They are, like their brethren in Ireland and South Africa, immovable.

They refuse to be routed from their land because they are wedded to it by faith and history. Their roots are too deep and indestructible.

Palestinians will decide their fate — not the marauding armies headed by racists and war criminals who cling to the antiquated notion that might is right.

It will take a little more time and patience, but the sovereignty and salvation that Palestinians have earned in blood and heartache is, I am convinced, approaching not far over the horizon.

The final word is “shame”.

There are politicians and governments who will forever wear the shame of permitting Israel to commit genocide against the people of Palestine.

These politicians and governments will deny it. The evidence of their crimes is plain. We can see it in the images of the apocalyptic landscape of Gaza. We will record every name of the more than 46,000 Palestinian victims of their complicity.

That will be their decrepit legacy.

Rather than stop the mass murder of innocents, they enabled it. Rather than prevent starvation and disease from claiming the lives of babies and children, they encouraged it. Rather than turn off the spigot of arms, they delivered them. Rather than shout “enough”, they spurred the killing to go on and on.

We will remember. We will not let them forget.

That is our responsibility: to make sure that they never escape the shame that will follow each and every one of them like a long, disfiguring shadow in the late-day sun.

Shame on them. Shame on them all.

Andrew Mitrovica is an award-winning writer and journalism educator at the University of Toronto. He has been an investigative reporter for a variety of news organisations and publications, including the CBC, CTV, Saturday Night Magazine, Reader’s Digest, the Walrus magazine and the Globe and Mail, where he was a member of the newspaper’s investigative unit. He is also a columnist for Al Jazeera.

The Australian High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea, John Feakes, has become the first foreign diplomat to visit the “valley of tears” in Wapenamanda, Enga, province.

Feakes braved fears of tribal warfare when he visited Australian government-funded projects at a tribal fighting zone on Wednesday.

The battlefields of Middle Lai, where more than 60 men lost their lives, fell silent after the signing of the landmark Hilton Peace Agreement last month in Port Moresby between the warring alliances.

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An Indonesian human rights researcher has cricitised his government’s failure to negotiate with West Papuan rebels, saying security officials should learn from the 2005 Aceh peace pact.

The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) research and mobilisation division head, Rozy Brilian, said the Indonesian government had always refused to hold a dialogue with Papuan pro-independence fighters.

He gave this message during a virtual public discussion titled “Failing to Address the Roots of the Conflict and the Window Dressing of a Development Illusion” last Friday — just two days before several Indonesian soldiers were believed to have been killed in a clash with West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) rebels in the Papuan highlands.

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The Indonesia soldiers were searching for New Zealand hostage pilot Philip Mehrtens who has been held captive since early February.

“The government always refuses to hold a dialogue with armed groups that the government refers to as KKB [armed criminal groups] even though the push for dialogue has often been encouraged by different parties,” said Brilian.

Yet, according to Brilian, the model of dialogue with an armed group has successfully been pursued by the Indonesian government in the past.

Aceh peace talks
Brilian gave the example of the Aceh peace talks conducted during the era of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY).

“This dialogue then concluded in negotiations that produced a Memorandum of Understanding (Mou), or agreement, between the Indonesian government and GAM [Free Aceh Movement] in Helsinki,” said Brilian.

That pact brought peace after three decades of warfare.

According to Brilian, the current government should learn from earlier experiences of holding dialogue with armed groups.

In addition to this, said Brilian, Indonesia could also learn from the Philippines which succeeded in “taming” armed independence groups through dialogue.

“Learn from other experiences in the Southeast Asia region, dialogue between the government and pro-independence armed groups were once held by the Philippines government with the pro-independence Moro Islamic Liberation Front group,” he said.

Translated by James Balowski for IndoLeft News. The original title of the article was “Pemerintah Dinilai Selalu Menolak Usul Dialog Damai dengan KKB Papua”.