Dearborn, Michigan – For more than a year, Layla Elabed says she and other Arab Americans have been attending “mass funerals.”

“We are in mourning. We are frustrated. We are angry. We are heartbroken. We feel betrayed,” Elabed said, finally catching his breath as he reflected on the wars raging in Gaza and Lebanon.

And now, with the bombs still raining, she added that Arab American voters are being asked to put an end to their grief and vote Tuesday for presidential candidates who don’t have a plan “to stop the killings.”

It’s a sentiment that reverberates within the large Arab-American community in the state of Michigan, where Elabed is a leader of the Uncommitted Movement, which aims to put pressure on US President Joe Biden and his vice-president. president and Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris. , to end their unwavering support for Israel.

Harris has promised to continue arming Israel while her Republican rival, Donald Trump, has a decidedly pro-Israeli record despite his claims that he wants to bring “peace” to the region.

Draped in a scarf decorated with Palestinian embroidery, known as a “tatreez,” Elabed told Al Jazeera that she left the top of the note blank.

“I don’t know because neither Vice President Harris nor Donald Trump has adopted a policy that clearly says the bombing is going to stop,” said the Detroit-area resident, mother of three and twelfth of 14 children of Palestinian immigrants. .

However, other Arab Americans make different choices.

Some support Harris, saying that despite her promise to maintain the flow of U.S. arms to Israel, the Democrat remains a better choice than Trump on domestic and foreign policy.

Others see Trump’s unpredictability and self-proclaimed status as an anti-war candidate as an opportunity to break with the Democratic Party and penalize Harris.

Elabed belongs to the third camp: those who say neither candidate deserves the community’s votes.

But even within this approach, there are divisions. Some are calling for skipping the presidential race altogether, while others are campaigning for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

“We must respect each other”

However, overall, there appears to be little general enthusiasm, underscoring the dilemma Arab Americans face as they struggle to agree on a strategy that could help influence elections and end to the US-backed Israeli wars, which have so far killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza and nearly 3,000 in Lebanon.

Alissa Hakim, a Lebanese-American university graduate, said she had “no hope” about voting.

Hakim voted in 2020 for the first time in a presidential election, voting for Biden who she said would be better than Trump. But after four years and a war that many experts have called a genocide, the 22-year-old said she strongly rejects the “lesser of two evils” argument.

“The bar is so low for our presidential candidates that you want us to vote for you just because you’re not the other person,” Hakim said, sitting in a Yemeni cafe with a laptop that reads stickers representing the map of historic Palestine. .

“It made me realize that we need to respect each other more than just selling our vote to whoever says the nicest words,” she told Al Jazeera.

Although Hakim remains undecided, she said her vote certainly wouldn’t go to Trump or Harris.

In Dearborn, a city of 110,000 known as the capital of Arab America, the two major campaigns attempt to achieve their goals in various ways, but their efforts do not seem to produce any decisive results.

As election day approached, Al Jazeera investigated dozens of residential neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city, with a large Arab population. Signs for school board candidates and Lebanese and Palestinian flags far outnumbered signs for the two main presidential candidates.

Biden won more than 80% of the vote in Dearborn’s Arab-majority precincts in 2020, according to the city’s election data, helping him win Michigan.

This time, however, Harris faces an uphill battle within the local community. Even Arab Americans who supported the Democrat in interviews with Al Jazeera expressed frustration with her positions and acknowledged the shortcomings of her campaign.

Last week, former President Bill Clinton told a rally in Harris, Michigan that Israel was “forcing” Hamas to kill civilians. He also suggested that Zionism predated Islam in comments that sparked outrage among Arab and Muslim groups.

Harris also refused to meet with Uncommitted Movement advocates after her campaign rejected the group’s request to allow a speech by a Palestinian representative at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

During a campaign stop in Michigan on Sunday, Harris was asked if she had a final argument to make to Arab Americans. She said she hoped to “win” the community’s votes and reiterated her position on the “need to end the war” in Gaza and secure the release of dozens of people held captive in the besieged territory.

“Difficult pill to swallow”

Ali Dagher, a local Democratic activist who signed a letter from prominent Arab Americans supporting Harris, said the community was “in shock” and “deeply depressed” because of the carnage in Gaza and Lebanon.

Dagher told Al Jazeera that support for Harris has come in partnership with other groups, including civil rights advocates and labor organizations that view Trump as a threat.

“Another presidency under Donald Trump would present a greater danger, not only on international politics… but also domestically – on human rights, on civil rights, on the environment,” Dagher said.

He acknowledged that voting for Harris was a “very difficult pill to swallow,” but said the decision was made on the assumption that Arab American Democrats would work with their allies to push her to change U.S. policy. respect for Israel and Palestine.

Some Arab Americans, however, are arguing for a complete divorce from the Democrats, arguing that working within the party system has proven futile.

“You don’t always do the same thing and you expect different results,” Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib said during an Al Jazeera town hall in Dearborn earlier this week.

Ghalib, one of the local Arab American officials who supported Trump, said he opened the channels of communication before the war broke out to try to end the rift with the Republican Party after years of engagement politics only with Democrats.

Arab Americans have not always been considered a Democratic-leaning constituency. Many Arab voters in the Detroit area supported Republican President George W. Bush in 2000. But the 2003 U.S.-led war on Iraq and the so-called “war on terror” shifted the community support for the Democratic Party – not just the presidential election. level.

Many Arab American politicians in Southeast Michigan have been elected to public office as Democrats, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib as well as several county commissioners and state legislators.

But those same Democratic officials, including Tlaib and Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who both served in the Michigan House of Representatives, refused to publicly support Harris in the war — signaling a new shift.

Campaigns target Arab voters

Harris hailed the support of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney — an architect of the post-9/11 era who pushed Arab Americans toward Democrats — and campaigned with his daughter, Liz Cheney.

This passage did not please many people in the region, and Republicans are trying to capitalize on this discontent.

“Kamala is campaigning with the warmongering, Muslim-hating Liz Cheney, who wants to invade virtually every Muslim country on the planet,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan in October. “And let me tell you, Muslims in our country see it and know it. »

A Republican-linked campaign aggressively targeted Arab Americans in Michigan with ads and text messages highlighting Harris’ ties to the Cheneys as well as her pro-Israel record.

“I volunteer and help elect pro-Israeli candidates. Our records show that you support Vice President Harris. This is (sic) awesome,” read a text message sent to Dearborn residents on Sunday.

“We need her to continue Biden’s policy of sending aid to Israel so it can continue to oppose terrorism in the Middle East. Do you agree?”

Conversely, Emgage PAC — a Muslim political group supporting Harris — sent mailers to Detroit-area voters highlighting Trump’s pro-Israel policies and his close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“What is happening is a trauma”

Yet, faced with “impossible choices,” many voters say they are convinced by neither effort.

As Trump met with a group of Arab-Americans in Dearborn on Friday, Leila Alamri, a local health care professional, brought a Palestinian flag to the gathering outside the Trump event.

She said her message was about the Palestinians and not the US elections, adding that she would not vote for either major candidate.

“We are here simply to represent the Palestinian people. We are not here to support one candidate or another,” Alamri told Al Jazeera.

Wissam Charafeddine, a local activist supporting the Green Party’s Stein, said the community felt humiliated by those in power and faced a “catastrophe” in opting out of the political system.

“What is happening is trauma,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Every person living in this region is directly affected in one way or another by this war – either through the death of a family member or friend, or through the destruction of a home or property. ‘a good one. It’s other than the shared trauma of watching a child genocide and women who get involved before their eyes every day.