Michigan (USA): Trump’s Gaza project scandes its former Arab-American voters

According to an article by CBS News, some Arab-American voters from Michigan reconsidered Donald Trump after his recent proposal to “take control” from the Gaza Strip. In Dearborn, the American city with the highest concentration of Muslim population, Trump had obtained 43% of the votes in the 2024 election, against 37% for Kamala Harris. The latter collected 15,000 votes less than Joe Biden in 2020 in this city.

Trump’s project, which suggests transforming Gaza into “Riviera du Middle East” under American control, arouses strong criticism within the community. The mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammoud, sees it as “a new chapter in the genocide in progress”, while the organization “Arab Americans for Trump” symbolically changed his name to “Arab Americans for Peace”.

Sarah Chabaan, a student who voted Trump, expresses mixed regrets, while crediting the former president for his role in the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas. For Osami Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, the pro-Trump vote was above all a vote of protest against the Biden-Harris administration, deemed ineffective in the face of the situation in Gaza. The anger caused by these declarations broke out while nearly 200,000 displaced Palestinians have recently returned to northern Gaza, as part of the ceasefire agreement. Trump’s proposal was largely rejected by the Middle East countries and US Muslim organizations, which denounce an ethnic cleaning project for the Palestinians.