At a sombre watch party, Arab Americans turn their backs on Harris and open a door for Trump

There were bright lights, colorful balloons, lots of people, lots of food – everything that makes a party. But there was no celebratory mood from start to finish.

At an election night party at a sprawling food court in Dearborn, Michigan, residents ate and chatted but didn't spend much time watching the television screens showing the 2024 election results from across the country.

Dearborn is the largest Arab-majority city in the United States. Nearly 54% of the 110,000 residents claim Middle Eastern or North African ancestry, many of them of Lebanese and Palestinian origin.

The Arab-American vote in these areas was once clearly democratic.

But Israel's brutal wars in Gaza and Lebanon have destroyed the American-Arab “blue wall,” and many are angry about the Biden-Harris administration's handling of the Middle East crisis.

Read moreIn the “capital of Arab America,” voters plan to punish Harris for the wars in Gaza and Lebanon

This year, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris was not on the ballot for many people at the massive Election Night watch party organized at Dearborn's sprawling The Canteen grounds.

Donald Trump was also not a preferred candidate after his tumultuous first term in office, which saw the imposition of a “Muslim ban” that banned citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

The term “watching the party” is a bit misleading, admitted doctor Ali Dabaja.

“This is a very difficult and dark time for many Arab and Muslim Americans. We don't come here to have a watch party. “I don’t come here to party,” he explained.

Dewnya Bazzi, a lawyer of Lebanese origin, said she did not support either of the party's two main presidential candidates. She only attended the party to spend the evening with like-minded people.

“I felt like I wanted to be with people from my community tonight,” Bazzi said. “We were supposed to sit at home and watch it on TV and I thought, let's go. Let me get a babysitter and let's go. I just wanted to be with the people in our community, just to ease some of the tension because I think it's a really nervous time for everyone.”

That was the purpose of the event, according to watch party organizer Hassan Chami.

“People just feel good when they are together, but no one is going to celebrate no matter who wins. Nobody’s going to celebrate, you know,” Chami said.

“I’m not in favor of anyone winning”

As the night wore on, as Trump won key electoral college states, Zainab Shami admitted he was feeling “dark.”

Shami smiled ruefully as the competing television screens broadcast CNN and Fox News above her, content to capture her mood with the words “unexcited” and “hopeless.”

“Honestly, I just don’t know. I am at a loss for words. I don't want anyone to win. I just hope Kamala Harris loses. I don't even want Trump to win. But you know, I want Harris to lose,” she said.

The 40-year-old teacher said she has long been frustrated with the U.S.'s two-party political system and its “broken” electoral votes. The latter system, which gives an unfair advantage to voters in swing states, made Shami's vote particularly powerful since Michigan, with 15 electoral votes, was a battleground state in a tough race.

In the 2016 race, Hillary Clinton lost Michigan to Trump by just 10,000 votes. Four years later, the Arab-American vote overwhelmingly went for President Joe Biden, with the Democrat winning Michigan by 150,000 votes in 2020. In Dearborn itself, Biden won 74.2% of the vote compared to 24.2% for Trump.

However, by the end of his term as president, Biden had lost the support of this community.

As Biden seemingly turned a deaf ear month after month to protesters' repeated calls to tie continued U.S. military aid to Israel to a ceasefire in the Gaza and Lebanon conflicts, the U.S. president acquired a new nickname in these parts: “Genocide Joe.”

Israel strenuously denies allegations that it is carrying out genocide in Gaza or targeting a specific community, the Shiites, in Lebanon.

But Shami is embroiled in the conflict in every sense of the word and has little patience for the claims of Biden or Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Shami was born in the United States to parents who immigrated from southern Lebanon. She has elderly aunts and uncles who lost their homes, clinics and jobs and had to flee recent Israeli bombings.

“I am a native American citizen. But as someone with roots somewhere else, I understand what it’s like to care for people in another part of the world,” said Shami.

“A glimmer of hope”

Read more“A Glimmer of Hope”: Mixed Feelings in the “Capital” of Arab America

As the hours passed and a second Trump presidency seemed inevitable, Bazzi acknowledged that there could be backlash or misunderstanding among some on the left against people like her who chose to vote for a third-party candidate or skip the presidential race section of their ballot papers.

“We’ve seen a Trump administration before, and I’m not going to lie, I’m obviously Muslim,” said the lawyer, wearing a headscarf. “You could see it and we felt it during the Trump era, in terms of hate and racism. But honestly, at least we weren't slaughtered back then, right? So it's like we're facing this hatred here as US citizens, in a country that hopefully protects us based on the law, while we watch our families and friends being slaughtered abroad.

“When Trump takes office, I will endure this backlash all day and carry it on my shoulders rather than watch my family and friends being slaughtered abroad,” she said.

With the new dawn just hours away, Albert Abbas, who voted for Trump, said he was hopeful about the old, new president.

“He gives us a glimmer of hope. “He talked about ending the wars and guaranteeing the end of the wars in relation to Lebanon and Gaza on his first day in office,” he said.

Abbas had the opportunity to meet Trump days before Election Day on Nov. 5, when the Republican candidate made a pit stop in Dearborn on Friday and met community members at a restaurant, The Grand Commoner, owned by his brother.

“You know politicians talk all the time and tell you what you want to hear. And then they say something somewhere else about what the other population wants to hear,” he said. “But the fact that he gave us this glimmer of hope, this one percent chance for our people to survive in Gaza and Lebanon, forced us to open the doors to him.”