MICHIGAN  –  Abdullah Hammoud was pacing across his office, having an animated phone conversation about former President Bill Clinton’s claim that Hamas “forces” Israel to kill Palestinian civilians.

By the time the mayor of the Detroit suburb of Dearborn sat down for an interview, he had shaken off the anger – at least on the surface.

Hammoud, 34, appeared clear-eyed about the future of the city known as the capital of Arab America and the way forward for its bereaved community amid Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon.

“There’s a blanket of grief that has just covered this community, and people are just trying to manage, obviously, amidst the entirety of the presidential election with the backdrop of a genocide, the war in Lebanon, the bombing in Yemen and so on,” Hammoud told Al Jazeera.

Hammoud, one of the most prominent Arab American elected officials in the United States who served in the State Legislature as a Democrat, has not endorsed any of the candidates, urging residents to “vote their conscience” instead.

In a close race, the tens of thousands of Arab voters in Dearborn – a city of 110,000 people – and across Michigan may prove crucial for the outcome of the election in the state and possibly the country.

That’s not lost on the candidates: on Friday, Trump is expected to visit Dearborn, and Harris has met Hammoud previously during the campaign, but not in Dearborn.

Hammoud stressed the need to come out and vote for the community to make its voice heard.

“In this moment in time, what is more important than anything else is standing firm in our values and our principles and standing firm on the side of one another in the city,” he said.

But for Hammoud, the struggle to end Israel’s killing machine in Gaza and Lebanon – the ancestral home of thousands of Dearborn residents, including the mayor himself – does not end when the polls close on November 5 and a new president is elected.

“Whoever assumes that office, we’re prepared to hold their feet to the fire and hold them to account,” he said. “Everybody’s promising a ceasefire, but nobody’s saying how they’re going to deliver it.” (Al Jazeera)

Photo: Mayor Abdullah Hammoud at a his office in Dearborn. (Al Jazeera) …[+]