SYMPOSIUM: AMERICA IN THE WORLD The Role of Arab American Advocacy Groups in Shaping American Foreign Policy Lanouar Ben Hafsa Published online: 13 September 2014 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 Abstract This paper aims to offer some insights into the ways in which Arab-Americans experience the United States and adjust to its political institutions. It stresses how such a community still finds it difficult to consolidate its efforts and exert pressure on the decision making process. But to gain national visibility and recognition, they need first to voice its concerns throughout mainstream advocacy groups. In this regard, the term “Arab lobby” is a misnomer as very often it is used as a shorthand word for the loose coalition of organi- zations that seek to improve Arabs’ conditions in the U.S. and to influence American foreign policy in the Middle East. Notwithstanding, this study is meant to highlight the differ- ence between what some termed the informal Arab lobby, sponsored by rich oil countries, and the formal Arab American lobby, represented today by the Arab American Institute (AAI) and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and headquartered in Washington D.C. However, while the different components of the pro-Arab lobby cannot represent “the Arabs” as a united political group, they have been able to share a common concern: Palestine. In effect, not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been a top priority and a principal focus of the Arab lobby as a whole, but it has also been viewed as a tool to measure its political efficacy. Last but not least, despite the very limited success achieved by the Arab lobby in its attempts to shape American foreign policy (compared to its pro-Israel counter- part), this study demonstrates that the members of the Arab and Jewish communities in the United States share common grounds on almost every issue central to Arab-Israel peace and U.S. policy in the Middle East, on top of them the two-state solution (Zogby International, 2007). Keywords U.S. foreign policy . Middle East conflict . Arab lobby . pro-Israel lobby . 2008 and 2012 U.S. elections Studying American foreign policy poses an interesting chal- lenge. The topic is highly complex and requires analysis of the interplay of many forces: political, economic, military, and ideological. To non-Americans, generally less familiar with its intricacies, it is imperative to appreciate first the domestic political context, which shapes its general contours and weighs upon its orientations. Much has been written about U.S. policies in the Middle East, especially the factors that have determined and shaped the American role in the Arab- Israeli conflict, as many of the decisions taken in that sense seem to reflect more the influence of special interest lobbying than the will of the American public in general. This paper aims to explore the context, the actors, the procedures, the interests and the challenges involved in the Arab lobbying effort. I intend to gauge the degree of the Arab contribution to the decision-making process and to assess the efficiency of Arab American advocacy groups in promoting an “Arab agenda,” which places the Palestinian question at the heart of their concerns. It is by no means a paper on American Muslims or Islam, and is partly based on interviews of two Washington-based Arab American leaders, Dr. James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab America Institute, and Warren David, president of the American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee. 1 Quick Facts About Arab Americans The term “Arab American” refers to Americans who trace their ancestry to one of the 22 Arab-speaking countries, which 1 This research was conducted in Washington, DC (Nov./Dec. 2012), thanks to a grant I earned from the Center for Maghreb Studies in Tunis (CEMAT). L. B. Hafsa (*) Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, University of Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia e-mail: anouar_benhafsa@yahoo.fr Soc (2014) 51:513–523 DOI 10.1007/s12115-014-9817-7