Palestinians and pro-Palestine allies brace for Trump

As Israel's ongoing assault on the densely populated Gaza Strip intensified over the past year, so too did a nascent but quickly mobilized movement of pro-Palestinian activists. For them, the 2024 election offered a perfect forum to leverage their opposition to the war. Operating largely under the broad banner of the Uncommitted movement, activists and allies targeted predominantly Democratic lawmakers in the hopes that grassroots electoral pressure could shift the party's support for the Israeli offensive. The movement also sought to endear themselves to voters who might otherwise sit out what they saw as a zero-sum choice between Donald Trump's overt xenophobia and the Democrats' permissive stance toward Israel.

It was a gamble that seems to have failed spectacularly. Not only has the Biden administration barely shifted from its staunch pro-Israel policies, but the incoming Trump administration has wasted little time positioning itself as even more hostile to pro-Palestinian activists both at home and abroad. As a result, many of those activists who strategically withheld their votes and endorsements for Vice President Kamala Harris must now grapple with the indirect consequences of those decisions. At the same time, the crisis in Gaza which animated them in the first place has continued unabated.

Faced with the unambiguous hostility of the incoming Republican administration, and the frustration of many centrist Democrats who blame the Uncommitted movement and its allies for contributing to their electoral loss, where do pro-Palestinian activists go from here?

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'The canary in the coal mine'

"Our community is about to be subjected to a lot more surveillance and violence," Uncommitted organizer Abbas Alawieh said to NPR after Trump's re-election. "Our community won't be alone in that."

In the Uncommitted movement's epicenter of Dearborn, Michigan — where Trump's decisive win marked the city's first GOP presidential victory since 2000 — there is a "complex mix of disbelief and wary curiosity," with residents "wondering what Trump will do for Palestinians," said Slate. "I think he's going to target us," Alawieh said to the outlet. "That's what he's going to do. He's going to target our families, and it's going to hurt." And with just weeks to go before Trump is inaugurated, "all his rhetoric and appointments are indicating that his campaign's vow to crack down on pro-Palestinian sentiment in America will be a defining factor of his administration's early days," said Haaretz's Ben Samuels.

Pro-Palestinian activism is "in many ways, the canary in the coal mine," said Adalah Justice Project Executive Director Sandra Tamari to Politico. "So our organizations are under more threats, because what all those authoritarian forces would love to do is to shut down any dissent in the country."

'Some self-criticism is due'

Trump's re-election is "scary," said Palestinian American policy analyst and writer Abdelhalim Abdelrahman to NBC News, but "I'm not ready to jump the gun just yet." While there will likely be "a lot of pro-Israel rhetoric," there will be a "little bit more diplomacy" as well. That's particularly true given the role of Massad Boulos, father-in-law to first daughter Tiffany Trump, and the president-elect's campaign envoy to Michigan's Arab and Muslim community, who will "have a little bit more operational freedom than people realize in this administration." Asked whether there are strategies emerging from advocates for influencing the Trump administration" away from some of its more extreme surrogates, Slate's Aymann Ismail said the "Lebanese American in Dearborn who invited Trump to a restaurant" during the campaign, allowing him to meet with community members, "will be particularly important, especially when we think about what little influence will be available to Trump to try to steer him away from continuing the ongoing onslaught that's happening in Palestine."

At the same time, "some self-criticism is due in the pro-Palestinian movement," said Arab American Institute founder and longtime Democratic National Committee operative James Zogby to Politico. By "not enabling themselves to support Harris" in the wake of their unsuccessful effort to place a Palestinian-American speaker onstage at the Democratic National Convention, activists "boxed themselves into a corner." To that end, with "less leverage in Washington" than under the Biden administration, activists will "shift to more local political tactics, including economic pressure campaigns like boycotts, supporting protests and community organizing," said Politico.