URBANA – According to the Gaza Health Ministry, Israel’s ongoing war with Gaza has left more than 45,000 Palestinians dead. It is unclear how President-elect Donald Trump will address the conflict when he returns to office on January 20, 2025. That has left local Muslims and Palestinians with mixed feelings.
Muslims and Palestinians activists in Urbana-Champaign spent much of 2024 protesting the Middle East conflict.
They tried to get Champaign and Urbana city councils as well as members of the Illinois congressional delegation to pass a ceasefire resolution. And there were calls for the University of Illinois to divest relationships with companies doing business with Israel.
Now, they are preparing for President-elect Donald Trump’s return to The White House. He has already vowed to end the now 15-month old war.
“You’re gonna have peace in the Middle East. They should have peace in the Middle East.” said Donald Trump to voters in Dearborn, Michigan in November. The US Census says 54 percent of people living in that city claim Middle Eastern or North African ancestry.
In a social media post, Trump also promised there will be “hell to pay” if American and Israeli hostages held by Hamas are not released by the time he’s sworn in.
Trump also appointed former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to be the next ambassador to Israel. Huckabee describes himself as an “unapologetic, unreformed Zionist” and does not support a separate state for Palestinians.
“There’s no such thing as the West Bank. There’s only Judea and Semantic. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.” said Huckabee while visiting in Israel in 2017.
Ahead of Trump’s second term, the first word that came to Yasmine’s mind was a fear that hate crimes will increase. She is a local Palestinian and an University of Illinois alumnus. Her family lives in Palestine’s West-Bank. For safety reasons, she asked that we not use her last name.
“I don’t let that paralyze me, but I do think that it does raise concerns. Sometimes when you’re just like in a public space, or even if you’re in more intimate spaces where you’re the only Muslim, it can be a little bit more scary with these sentiments being shared,” said Yasmine.
Yasmine adds that she does have some hopes for a Trump presidency like a possible ceasefire.
Jessica Yasin, 42, is a member of the Muslim Action Committee and like Yasmine, voted for the Green Party.
“For me, the the Green Party was all about stopping the genocide, and also I was really, hoping by voting Green, if we could get that 5% that we could make a change in our we could break the two party system. We could break it, and we could do something bigger and better,” said Yasin.
Yasin doesn’t have any fears about a Trump presidency but she doesn’t have much hope either.
“My hopes are fiction. You know? My hopes are that he’ll wake up and be like, ‘oh, you know what, let’s, let’s stop Israel what they’re doing.’ But we all know that that’s just a fantasy, unfortunately,” said Yasin.
Jessica said she’s full of concern but also resolve. She said they’ve really been able to keep a community together that really keeps them safe”
“We’re really becoming stronger together, regardless of who our leader is. So if rhetoric does come our way, we can protect each other,” said Yasin.
Back in 2017, Trump implemented legislation that directly impacted Muslim and Arab communities. The Muslim Ban blocked entry of people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.
Omar Saleh is an attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR is a nationwide Muslim civil rights and advocacy group.
“People believe rhetoric when it comes from somebody in Office of the President, and so what that results in is an uptick in assaults and race, race related assaults and bullying and harassment. All across from the public to schools,” said Saleh.
He said CAIR is preparing for an increase in immigration related calls, whether it be for direct service or to answer questions or concerns.
Some people are concerned that if the war with Israel in Palestine and Lebanon continues to escalate with Trump in power, it may make it harder for their families to seek asylum in the US.
But, they also know most of their families do not want to leave their homelands anyway.
Hadee El-Zahdan is a Palestinian student at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
“There’s always the side of me that has that slim glimmer of hope that [Trump] somehow do something that the myriad of presidents before him haven’t done. But at the same time, there’s always this fact of life that Muslims and Palestinians around the world have accepted that the only people who are going to bring a free Palestine to fruition is Palestinians themselves,“ said El-Zahdan.
He said Palestinians also know that if they did come here to seek asylum they wouldn’t be able to go back to their homeland.
El-Zahdan also voted green, but not everyone did. Despite Trump’s historically negative rhetoric surrounding their communities, some Muslims and Arabs still voted for Trump.
A Lebanese Muslim student who attends the University of Illinois but did not want to give his name, said Trump had an ‘America first’ approach that favored ending wars rather than funding them.
“I feel like we kind of needed to stop American imperialism that has been ongoing in the world. We’ve been meddling in too many different countries’ issues and not focusing on our own issues here,” he said.
He chose to remain anonymous out of fear of being doxxed for his political views.
“I would say every range of possibilities going to be better than what the the current administration has already done. So I feel like anything would be an improvement from what the Biden Harris administration has done,” said the student.
Jessica Yasin is half Iraqi on her father’s side. She said she has many family members on her mother’s side who voted for Trump.
“I will say this for Donald Trump, when he says something he usually means it, it just doesn’t usually mean in the right way. If he means stop it, as in, he’s just going to throw Palestinians to the side and let Israel take over. You know, I mean, that’s one way of stopping it. Doesn’t mean that’s the right way,” said Yasin.
There are four families in Champaign with families in Gaza. Two of them were unable to respond to IPM’s request for an interview.
Collectively they lost over 70 family members since the war started.