At a bustling Dearborn cafe on Inauguration Day, just hours after a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel went into effect, Arab Americans, many of whom had friends and relatives killed or displaced in the region’s war, were relieved for a stop in the fighting.
“Anybody who is humane, who cares about humanity, is glad there’s a ceasefire because innocent human beings are being tortured and slaughtered,” said Joe, an Arab American diner who declined to give his last name because of the issue’s sensitivity, and said he voted for Donald Trump in November.
But optimism was still in short supply as no one at the cafe who spoke with BridgeDetroit viewed the incoming and outgoing presidents as committed to maintaining peace, and they expect the suffering to resume: “I spit on both of them – both parties are responsible,” Joe added.
The war has raged since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing around 1,200 people, and taking hundreds of hostages, some of whom have since died. In response, Israel invaded and killed an estimated 46,000 people, though researchers estimate the true figure is likely closer to 70,000 as of October. Most are thought to be civilians. Meanwhile, Israel has destroyed 90% of Gaza’s buildings, the United Nations estimates, and about 90%, or two million Palestinians, have been displaced.
Phase one of the three-phase ceasefire process went into effect Sunday, and along with a cessation of military action involves the exchange of hundreds of hostages from each side.
The pain has been deeply felt in metro Detroit, home to the nation’s largest Arab-American population and a large Jewish population.
Trump said Monday evening that he is “not confident” the ceasefire will last.
“Gaza is interesting,” the president said from the Oval Office. “It’s a phenomenal location. On the sea. The best weather. Some beautiful things could be done with it.” The comments stoked suspicion that the US would support an ethnic cleansing of Gaza and allow Israel to redevelop it, as has been suggested.
Arab-American folks said they don’t expect peace to last because they say the new deal doesn’t address the root issue of the century-long conflict, and most directed frustration at both US political parties and Israel.
Terry Ahwal is a Palestinian American author who lives in Westland, grew up in the West Bank and voted for Cornel West, a third-party candidate, last year after campaigning for Biden in 2020. She said she is “devastated that both of the presidents have dismissed the Palestinian people’s humanity.”
Even if the peace deal holds and the immediate war ends, it’s a “Band-aid,” Ahwal said.
She and others said they doubt Israel is committed to peace, pointing to its ongoing bombing of Lebanon as a ceasefire there is being implemented, and that the Israeli Defense Force was ramping up attacks on Gaza in the hours before the ceasefire went into effect.
“I have lived through Israel’s ceasefires, so I know what Israel’s ceasefires are like,” Ahwal added.
Among local Jews, the view is somewhat divided. Younger US Jews, led by groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) have broadly been more critical of Israel than older American Jews. Matt Clark, with JVP Detroit, said he was relieved for a ceasefire, but said Israel is a “bad actor” that has been carrying out a “genocide” in Gaza. He worries that it will resume the war, pointing to IDF attacks on civilians in the West Bank and Gaza after the ceasefire was announced.
“Americans, Jews, people all over the world, and Palestinians continuing to raise their voices and pressuring the political system – that’s the key to this thing lasting,” Clark said.
The Jewish Federations of North America has been more supportive of Israel’s military action. David Kurzmann, a spokesperson for the local West Bloomfield-based chapter that represents 70,000 people, said the organization sees the deal as a “ray of light.”
“It has been 15 months of absolute heartache as we’ve watched our brothers and sisters taken brutally from their homes and held in terror tunnels beneath Gaza for 473 days,” he said. “To see the images of three young women returning home – the reunion with their families for many of us was a chance to finally breathe in a time where we’ve been unable to.”
Kurzmann said the ceasefire is “precarious” and added that there is little faith in the Jewish Federation that Hamas will follow the deal’s terms, pointing to the group withholding the names of the hostages it would release past a deadline.
Trump and former President Joe Biden have each taken credit for the deal. It is largely the same agreement that the Biden administration helped design and pushed throughout 2024, but it has been widely reported that Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, demanded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accept the deal, getting it over the finish line.
Who gets credit for lasting peace in Gaza could have implications for national elections in Michigan. US support for Israel was among several issues that propelled Trump to a narrow win in the state.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who ran against Trump in 2024, received at least 22,000 fewer votes than Biden did in the 2020 presidential race in Hamtramck, Dearborn, and Dearborn Heights – Michigan’s most heavily Arab American and Muslim cities.
The ceasefire is being framed by at least some Muslim officials as a win for Trump, who were quoted over the weekend in a Times of Israel story that declared a Trump envoy swayed Netanyahu more in one meeting than Biden did all year. However, Biden called the idea that Trump got the deal done a “joke,” and it is difficult to know how events unfolded behind the scenes.
Westland resident Sonya Kassis, a second-generation Palestinian immigrant, made what she characterized as a difficult decision to vote third party instead of for Harris in the last election. She said the current ceasefire is unlikely to push the needle politically;Those who supported Trump credit him, but for most “it doesn’t make a difference,” she said.
“Nobody feels like ‘Finally, this is the solution we’ve been waiting for,’” Kassis said.
In Hamtramck, a city neighboring Detroit that is about 60% Muslim or Arab American, Biden received about 6,500 votes in 2020, while Harris received 3,200. Meanwhile, Trump’s vote total in the city increased by about 2,000, in part, due to the endorsement from Hamtramck’s Yemeni American mayor, Amer Ghalib.
In a statement to BridgeDetroit, Ghalib praised the “much needed” and “overdue” peace deal.
“Ceasefire was a priority for us, and we supported President Trump because we believed that he could do it, and he did,” Ghalib said.
Maryam Hussein, a Dearborn resident who voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, said she is infuriated with Biden because it shows he could have gotten a ceasefire done sooner. Stein and West earned about 50,000 combined votes statewide in the 2024 election. Hussein plans to vote third party into the future unless a Democrat explicitly campaigns on standing up to Israel.
“No one gets my vote unless they do,” she said.
Tom, bring back the pickles!!!!!!