Donald Trump’s remarks that the US will “take over” Gaza and resettle the Palestinian population elsewhere have drawn outrage and criticism from Palestinian and Arab Americans across the US.
A group of Arab Americans that supported Trump during the 2024 election rebranded itself following Trump’s comments on displacing Palestinians, from “Arab Americans for Trump” to “Arab Americans for Peace”.
In a statement, the group said that while they still believed that Trump “is committed to achieving a lasting peace in the Middle East that is satisfactory to ALL parties”, they “take issue with the president’s suggestion of taking over Gaza and removing its Palestinian inhabitants to other parts of the Arab world”.
The group added that they were “adamantly opposed to the notion of transferring Palestinians outside of historic Palestine for ANY reason”.
The 2024 US presidential election marked a shift within communities that had long formed part of the Democratic base, as many Muslim and Arab Americans grew disillusioned over the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Trump actively courted those groups and polls indicate he made significant gains.
Protests against the Biden administration’s stance led to more than 700,000 “uncommitted” votes in the Democratic primaries, an attempt to pressure Joe Biden to shift course.
Layla Elabed, the co-chair of the Uncommitted National Movement responded to Trump’s remarks and said that she felt “sad, angry, and scared for our communities”.
The uncommitted movement opposed a Trump presidency, but ultimately declined to endorse Kamala Harris, citing her “unwillingness to shift” on Biden’s policies.
Layla Elabed, co-chair of the Uncommitted National Movement speaks in a press conference the day after the Michigan presidential primary in Dearborn in February 2024. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
“For months, we warned about the dangers of Trump at home and abroad but our calls largely went unheard,” Elabed wrote. Harris, she said, “left a vacuum by not visiting Michigan families impacted by US-supplied bombs to help create a permission structure for their trust while Trump visited Dearborn and filled a community in despair with lies”.
She continued: “Trump’s illegal calls for ethnic cleansing are horrific but as on so many other issues, Democrats had a chance to persuade voters they were the better alternative and they blew it.”
James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, which conducted an October poll of Arab American voters, noted at the time that in the institute’s 30 years of polling, it had not “witnessed anything like the role that the war on Gaza is having on voter behavior”. Another recent poll found that 29% of 2020 Biden voters who opted for a different candidate than Harris in 2024 cited “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” as their top issue.
On Wednesday, Zogby described Trump’s comments about the US taking Gaza in an interview as “dangerous, provocative, illegal and callously insensitive to Palestinian needs”.
“Anyone who knows the region knows Palestinians are not going to leave,” he said. “And if they want to go anywhere, it’s back to their villages in Israel they were expelled from in 1948.”
Justin Amash, a former Republican congressman from Michigan whose family is of Palestinian origin, compared Trump’s proposal on Tuesday to ethnic cleansing.
“If the United States deploys troops to forcibly remove Muslims and Christians – like my cousins – from Gaza, then not only will the US be mired in another reckless occupation but it will also be guilty of the crime of ethnic cleansing,” he said. “No American of good conscience should stand for this.
Wa’el Alzayat, the chief executive officer of EmgageUSA, a Muslim American advocacy organization, said that “evicting people from their land is a violation of international law” and that sending US troops to Gaza was not only “deeply problematic” but also, he imagined, “politically very unpopular”.
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Alzayat was one of a number of prominent Arab Americans the Guardian spoke with who traced the blame back to Biden.
He said that in his view, “the reason we have Trump contemplating turning the rubble into Miami-style condos that Jared Kushner could probably profit from is because Biden gave those bombs to the Israelis”.
Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic representative of Michigan and the only Palestinian American member of Congress, said in response to Trump’s comments that “Palestinians aren’t going anywhere” and that Trump “can only spew this fanatical bullshit because of bipartisan support in Congress for funding genocide and ethnic cleansing”.
Ruwa Romman, a Georgia state representative who is Palestinian American, said in a statement on Tuesday that she was “furious with everyone”.
Romman was put forward by the Uncommitted movement to speak at the Democratic national convention, but the request was reportedly denied. She ultimately endorsed Harris.
“Everyone failed,” she said. “Everyone is responsible for the moment that we are in today. The idea that voters do not carry any responsibility is untenable and absurd. The idea that candidates don’t carry any responsibility is untenable and absurd.”
Romman added: “No fascist here or abroad will ever be able to erase Palestinians,” adding that the “harder they try the deeper our roots will grow”.
Hudhayfah Ahmad, the director of media relations for the Abandon Harris campaign, which supported Jill Stein, said in a statement: “The Biden-Harris administration’s full, unobstructed support for Israel’s campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing has failed to remove the Palestinians of Gaza from their land.”
“It is not Trump – just as it was not Biden or Harris – who decides what the Palestinians can or cannot do; that decision belongs solely to the people of Palestine,” Ahmad said.
In response to finger-pointing at voters who turned on Harris, Waleed Shahid, a former organizer for the Uncommitted movement and a Democratic strategist, called for introspection.
“Democratic party elites find it easier to punch down on grieving Palestinian families in Michigan desperate for a basic shift in their party’s policy than to challenge decisions made by Biden and Harris,” Shahid wrote. “But this is why Democrats lose – they don’t listen to voters; they sneer at them.”
