Trump made a direct pitch to end the war on Gaza. The people still living there were listening.
Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump visits The Great Commoner cafe while Hamtramck, MI mayor Amer Ghalib stands to his right on November 01, 2024 in Dearborn, Michigan.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Now that Donald Trump has won the American presidential election, people in Gaza are wondering what lies in store for them.
Citizens here feel that the genocide—and the Biden administration’s continuing support for it—is a key reason for Trump’s victory. They are certain that Biden’s unlimited support for Israel has been a disaster for their lives. But what the future holds with Trump in charge is not clear.
That is why, as I interviewed a number of people in the wake of the election, I found a mixture of hope and fear: hope that Trump might take steps to end the war on Gaza—as he says he wants to—and fear that he might let the genocide continue unchallenged. The one thing they all agree on: they feel that Trump made real promises about bringing the genocide to a close, and they want him to keep them. This is some of what they told me.
Reem Al-Khour, 40, from Gaza City, now displaced
It is very sad that we are in the second year of the war, the American elections have come, and the war has not stopped yet. The US administration has not yet acknowledged that there were war crimes committed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, despite the killing of entire families that are no longer in the civil registry.
I supported Trump’s victory in the elections because throughout the war, he was saying that, if he was president, he would have stopped the war early. Now we are waiting for him to be honest in his words and force Israel to stop the war. I hope that these speeches are not just for electoral propaganda. We want to stop the war quickly. The days are passing quickly and they are all very bad because of the continuous bombing, destruction, and famine that we are also experiencing.
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Trump will not be against Israel. We know America’s great support for Israel. He is certainly a friend of Netanyahu’s. During his previous presidential term, he supported Netanyahu’s government, and it appears from Netanyahu’s speeches that he gave after Trump’s victory as if he is [happy Trump won]. Trump did things that angered the Palestinian people such as moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, or his so-called “deal of the century.” But the only positive thing is there was never a war on Gaza during his rule. And this is what we want. We want to stop the war and rebuild Gaza so that we can return to our normal lives.
Salem Al-Masry, 35, from the town of Beit Hanoun, now displaced
Trump’s victory in the elections may be good. He is a man who cares about the economy and about making deals with Middle Eastern countries, so he wants the Middle East to be calm. And he said that he would restore calm and stop the war. But I do not trust him—he could support Netanyahu’s plans.
We only want them to stop the war. I want to return to my home with my three children and my wife. I want to meet with my mother and father in the north. I have not seen them for a year and two months. What happened during a whole year of killing and destruction is enough. We want a strong person who can force Netanyahu to stop the war. We do not want someone to unite with Netanyahu against us so that the war continues. There are dangerous plans being implemented by the army on the ground in Gaza, and Biden did not care about them. We see our areas occupied by Israel and Biden is just watching us. So we want Trump to stop the war quickly.
Rana Al-Rayes, 22, a history student at Al-Aqsa University from Khan Yunis
I have been following the news closely since the beginning of the war. I have never seen a failure like I have seen from the Biden administration, which has encouraged Israel to continue the war until now. Biden did not have the ability to impose his opinion on Netanyahu to stop the war, so our suffering has continued for more than a year. I supported Harris a little, but she is from Biden’s administration. Even if she wanted to convince Biden of the necessity of stopping the war, she did not do so.
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Trump has previous experience with the Middle East from when he was president—no wars occurred during his presidency. He was bragging about that during his election campaign and convinced many Muslims and supporters of the Palestinians that he would end the war.
There is no US president who does not have strong friendships and absolute support for Israel. But Trump may be honest that wars are not part of his policy. The difficulty is whether this will happen and, if so, when. The people in Gaza are very tired and cannot wait any longer. Gaza has never experienced a war more difficult than this one, it was unfortunately the worst, so we do not want to lose hope and we hope that Trump will be honest in his promise to us that the war will stop quickly.
I miss my life, my university, and my normal days. We hope that Trump will not let us down as Biden did. We lived difficult moments of death because of Biden’s crazy support for Netanyahu.
Raed Baraka, 50, from the town of Khuza’a, east of Khan Yunis
Unfortunately, there is no honest American president. My house was destroyed by American missiles. Biden participated with Netanyahu in the war on Gaza and did not show mercy on our children and women. Biden agreed to our displacement and expulsion from our homes and their destruction in this terrifying way. We want a fair and strong president who can stop the war on Gaza. We want Trump to stop this war. We want him to be honest.
Trump is a controversial president. Sometimes he seems like a crazy person with strange ideas about the Middle East, but what matters to us now is stopping the war on Gaza and giving us a state so we can live in safety. We do not want wars. Since I was born, I have lived through many successive wars. In every war on Gaza, my house has been destroyed and my agricultural land bulldozed. If Trump supports Netanyahu or Israel, let him do as he pleases, but not by depriving us of living in peace and security. Stop the war on us. This is what we want from you. It is not difficult for you to stop the killing of children and women and the continuous bombing of our land. Trump says he is a man of peace. We are a people of peace. We want him to stop the war.
We cannot back down
We now confront a second Trump presidency.
There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.
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Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.
The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
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Onwards,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation
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