By Ibrahim Al jabin
Syrians worldwide don’t need to go through the trouble of crossing the Atlantic to discover the dilemma faced by their fellow “Syrian Americans” during times like these. They find themselves in a moment of choice between the rising Democrat Kamala Harris and the returning Republican Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential elections.
Let’s look at how this dilemma manifests; the same crisis strikes in the United States as it has struck before inside Syria and in countries of refuge: a crisis of deciding allegiance amidst a war of interests and directions. Syrians have always been torn between ideologies they hail from, and there is no better time than the genocide Benjamin Netanyahu has been waging against the Palestinians for the past ten months to make Syrians relive this anxiety. They are torn between their desire for an American president who might serve the central Arab cause (the Palestinian cause) and curb Israel’s excesses, or a president who is stringent regarding their Syrian cause and was the only one who correctly diagnosed Bashar al-Assad’s behavior when he called him “Animal Assad.”
Trump was constrained until 2019 by the strategy set by Barack Obama to handle the Syrian file, which was built on the Geneva understanding between Kerry and Lavrov, and handed Syria to the Russians and Iranians accordingly. This Democratic strategy continued under Biden.
The Democrats’ relationship with Iran is above all else, based on a political doctrine that sees Iran’s role and its allies as necessary to safeguard U.S. interests in the Middle East and the world. This will not change.
However, key members of Trump’s team had started formulating a new philosophy for handling the Syrian file, had they not been ousted from the White House by the elections. They are preparing once again to activate that strategy should their candidate win the presidency.
But Trump is also the U.S. president who recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, announced the Abraham Accords, and encouraged Arab normalization with Israel.
At the same time, Syrian Americans cannot forget that they are American citizens, meaning they must think about their interests within the United States first and foremost, impacting their daily lives, futures, families, and businesses—undeniable and undisputed points.
But what do Syrian Americans do when they think about their major issues beyond U.S. borders?
In such cases, the electoral mood is influenced by various dimensions, not least the religious and national dimensions, which make Syrians automatically and unhesitatingly supporters of the Palestinian cause. However, this support now comes with a label marked “Iran,” after Hamas grew closer to the Iranians and the Syrian regime. Thus, Syrians find themselves in a highly problematic position created by the Middle East’s contradictions, reinforced by the compelled official Arab stance in this disappointing era.
It is a Palestinian dilemma that Hamas felt the need to create after the targeting of the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam in general by Arab regimes. Hamas, a legitimate offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood in ideology, leadership, and organization, accelerated its allegiance shift after the Arab Spring faltered. Having been aligned with the uprising peoples, from Tahrir Square to Damascus, Hamas transitioned from siding with Morsi to embracing Sisi, from raising the Syrian revolution’s flag to praising Bashar al-Assad and describing Qasem Soleimani, the killer of Syrians, as “the martyr of Jerusalem,” as Ismail Haniyeh put it, who died safely in the hospitality of the Supreme Leader in Tehran.
It would be another disappointment if Syrians lost their independent decision-making in judging the political scene and its transformations, resigning from their leadership role in the Arab and Islamic worlds, after being the ones who have embraced and even created resistance, starting with the martyred Syrian leader Izz ad-Din al-Qassam and ending with the last Syrian child who understands with his mother’s milk that the Palestinian cause is their own cause.
Syrians, including Syrian Americans, should not bear the responsibility for Hamas’s erratic decisions. They should not follow the path that the armed Palestinian resistance has chosen to obtain military and financial support from Iran and Hezbollah. This was Hamas’s choice, which acts according to a religious rule that says, “The besieged is compelled, and the compelled is permitted to eat pork and carrion,” as Hamas leaders have echoed in private and public circles.
If Syrians thought with the same logic, it would have been easier for them to deal with the Israelis, as long as Assad besieges, kills, destroys their homes, arrests their sons and daughters, rapes their women, and displaces millions of them.
They did not do that, and they remained committed to moral, Arab, and religious principles that prevent them from slipping into the embrace of their enemy and the enemy of their Palestinian brothers. So, what is the solution today? Should they follow Hamas’s steps and embrace Khamenei themselves? This is what will happen if they vote for Kamala Harris, whose Democratic administration prevents anything that might annoy Iran’s ally (Bashar al-Assad). Some remnants of the Brotherhood in America even rejoice, telling Assad that this administration will not pass the anti-normalization law with his regime, claiming that negotiations have collapsed—how absurd are such methods! After a few months of the bill’s proposal, these people raised the white flag, declared their surrender, and spread joyous news to reassure Assad. Those who insisted on passing the Caesar Act and the Captagon laws did not do that; they persevered for many years and worked hard to achieve these laws.
There is no doubt that Trump was supportive of Israel, but he was also a strong president in the White House who proposed a peace plan based on a two-state solution. Who remembers his words before opening the UN Security Council session that discussed the issue of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in 2018? At that time, Trump said he believed the best option for Palestinians and Israel was a two-state solution. He said it was his “dream” to reach a peaceful resolution to the conflict. He added, “This is the best solution, I think. This is my feeling. I truly believe something will happen. And it is my dream to do that before the end of my first term.”
Trump had a peace plan for the Middle East, announced on January 28, 2020, known in the media as the “Deal of the Century.” It contained many elements unacceptable to Arabs and Palestinians, who dealt with it cautiously and perhaps negatively, while the Israelis highlighted the beneficial aspects without addressing what they must do to make it successful. The success of this plan requires a strong president in the White House, as the plan included a vision for the status of Jerusalem, which houses holy sites for Jews, Muslims, and Christians, in addition to agreed borders between the two sides and various security arrangements to address Israel’s concerns about so-called “Palestinian attacks and hostile neighbors.” The plan also aimed to meet Palestinian demands for establishing a Palestinian state, ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, and finding a solution for the plight of millions of Palestinian refugees.
Trump’s plan included arrangements for sharing scarce natural resources like water and addressing Palestinian demands for removing Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which now house over 400,000 Israelis among nearly three million Palestinians in the West Bank and 200,000 more settlers in East Jerusalem.
Everyone criticized Trump’s plan; even Europeans considered it inconsistent with UN resolutions. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to engage with Trump’s administration or his plan.
It is true that Trump’s positions did not adhere to international laws and recognized the annexation of sovereign states’ territories by force, but it remained a plan open to rejection, negotiation, and bargaining. Meanwhile, Obama and Biden’s approach was a soft surrender of not just the occupied territories but the entire Middle East to the Iranians and Russians.
The “Deal of the Century” did not proceed, and its chief advocate, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, has shifted to other interests, openly stating his disinterest in returning to the White House if Trump wins, focusing instead on his investment ventures and living with his family in Florida.
It would not be difficult for anyone to interpret the failure of the “Deal of the Century.” Nothing could stop it except the Israelis’ own intransigence and their rejection of the two-state solution it included, even in the unfair form it took.
This means, certainly, that Trump will have a different approach if he returns to the presidency, based on new realities that no longer align with the mechanisms of the “Deal of the Century.” Understanding Trump’s mindset is crucial in this regard, and one cannot forget his angry statements after October 2023, when he said in an interview with Time magazine, “The events of October 7 happened under Netanyahu’s watch,” adding, “They (in Israel) have the most advanced equipment; they had everything to stop the attack, and many people were aware of it (the attack), but Israel was not. I think Netanyahu is to be blamed heavily for that.”
Trump’s remarks in this interview carry significant implications, especially when he said he had a “bad experience” with Netanyahu, accusing him of withdrawing from the U.S. operation to kill Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in January 2020. Trump said, “Suddenly, we were told Israel would not participate. I was not happy about that. That’s something I will never forget.”
Everything is changing around Syrians, including Syrian Americans. The only constant so far is the Democrats’ insistence on the necessity of a strong Iran, making it evident that relying again on a political doctrine that sees its interest in further weakening Arab peoples, undermining their values, and viewing them through an orientalist lens as mere sects and ethnicities is futile.
