Mr. Sayed faced a fierce battle in which pro-Israel lobbyists-funded electoral support committees spent more than $60 million to bring him down.
Afrasianet - The Democratic Party's victory in the Michigan Senate primary will qualify him, if he wins, for a legislative position that will influence public policy at the U.S. level.
The matter coincided with two notable local events at the state level, with Rashida Tlaib, of Palestinian origin, winning again to run for her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives for her constituency, and Abbas Alawia, who is of Lebanese origin, winning the nomination for the local Senate of the same state, in a political movement consistent with the victory of Zahran Mamdani for mayor of New York in November last year.
The victory of Mamdani, as well as Al-Sayed, in the Democratic nomination are important events in the long path that Arabs and Muslims have gone The events of 11 September 2001, which brought them to the forefront and forced them, as a social group, to move from defending their civil rights to building electoral, financing and organizational networks.
The aforementioned electoral developments reveal an important paradox in which the Palestinians' regrettable absence from the new U.S.-Arab deals has been compensated by their strong presence in the electoral debate, universities, and progressive movements, and by the shift of the center of Palestinian influence from official diplomacy to societal and electoral politics.
As Trends Changed More than 100 Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives recently backed an amendment that seeks to withhold billions of dollars in aid to Israel, and the Democratic leadership has called for a "major reset" of U.S.-Israeli relations.
Tensions within the movement have led to the emergence of a deep ideological divide and a growing current opposing the continuation of unconditional arms shipments to Israel.
US President Donald Trump's announcement of approval of a project to build a Saudi nuclear reactor has ended a condition that US administrations, of all kinds, had set up for cooperation with Arab countries, which is the condition of normalization with Israel.
After the Camp David and Oslo models and the Abraham Accords, a new paradigm has emerged in which Gulf investments, energy issues, artificial intelligence, and sea lanes become key tools for attracting U.S. influence.
This is not only a change in the U.S. relationship with Israel, but also a change in the nature of the regional order. Israel is gradually losing its status as a state with near-absolute consensus within U.S. political institutions.
The importance of the Gaza war, in this debate, lies in the fact that it has transformed the Palestinian issue from an external file to an internal American issue, present in elections, universities, and party divisions, as well as in the debate over international law, the supply of weapons, and the influence of political money to the pro-Israel lobby.
The fallout from the war has also revealed a clear generational divide within the Democratic Party, as young, progressives, Muslims, and Arab Americans are more willing to confront traditional leaders regarding Israel.
The scene does not point to the end of the U.S.-Israel alliance, but rather to the end of Israel's immunity from public debate, as well as the transition of U.S. policy in the Middle East from a "normalization for support" formula to an "investment for influence" formula.
The second equation gives Arab states more room for maneuver, but the big question remains: Do they want to use these developments for the benefit of the Palestinians?.
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