Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib’s victory in the Michigan primary, making her the first Muslim woman to serve in the US Congress, was celebrated back in her ancestral village of Beit Our al-Fauqa in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Her relatives in the village, where Tlaib’s mother was born, greeted the news with a mixture of pride and hope that she will take on a US administration widely seen as biased against the Palestinian cause.
“This makes us proud - as the Tlaib family, residents of Beit Our al-Fauqa, as Palestinians, as Arabs and as Muslims, that a simple girl reaches such a position,” said her uncle, Bassam Tlaib.
Relatives served baklawa, a sweet pastry, and grapes, figs and cactus fruits from their garden to visitors celebrating her win.
"Thank God. Thank God," her mother said. "This is for the Arabs and Muslims all over the world."
Tlaib’s family said the soon-to-be Congresswoman held her wedding in Beit Our al-Fauqa in 1997 and last visited the village in 2006.
"It's a great honor for this small town. It's a great honor for the Palestinian people to have Rashida in the Congress," said Mohammed Tlaib, the village's former mayor and a distant relative. "For sure she will serve Palestine, for sure she will serve the interests of her nation. She is deeply rooted here."
Tlaib, a former state lawmaker, defeated five other candidates to win the Democratic nomination in her Michigan district in Tuesday's primary. She will run unopposed, setting her up to take the spot held since 1965 by John Conyers, who stepped down in December citing health reasons amid charges of sexual harassment.
While celebrating her win, Tlaib was embraced early Wednesday morning by her mother, Fatima, who briefly wrapped a Palestinian flag around Tlaib's shoulders.
"My mom is really, genuinely excited," Tlaib said of her victory.
The eldest of 14 children born to Palestinian immigrants in Detroit, the 42-year-old Tlaib advocates progressive positions associated with the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, such as universal healthcare, a higher minimum wage, environmental protection and affordable university tuition.
As a state lawmaker, she sought to defend Detroit's poor, taking on refineries and a billionaire trucking magnate who she accused of polluting city neighborhoods.
On the campaign trail, she criticized the influence of "big money" on politics and took aim at President Donald Trump, whom she famously heckled in 2016 while he was delivering a speech in Detroit.
In a 2016 op-ed explaining why she disrupted then-presidential candidate Trump, she described herself as an "American, parent, Muslim, Arab-American and woman."
In an interview on Wednesday, Tlaib said her grandfather emigrated from Palestine to Brazil during the US depression and eventually moved to Detroit to find better opportunities. He worked at a Ford Motor Company plant in the city, home of the US car industry, and she became the first Muslim woman elected to the state legislature.
Her father grew up in east Jerusalem, she said.
"When he was 19, he joined his father here. At 27, my grandmother grabbed him by the ear and took him to Palestine and said, 'You are going to marry a good Arab woman.'"
