Arab-Israeli Conflict - Faisal-Weizmann Agreement
The Faisal-Weizmann
Agreement was signed on January 3, 1919, by Emir Faisal (son of the King
of Hejaz) and Chaim Weizmann (later President of the World Zionist
Organization) as part of the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 settling
disputes stemming from World War I. It was a short-lived agreement for
Arab-Jewish cooperation on the development of a Jewish homeland in
Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East.
Weizmann first met Faisal in June 1918, during the British advance from
the South against the Ottoman Empire in World War I. As leader of an
impromptu "Zionist Commission", Weizmann traveled to southern
Transjordan for the meeting. The intended purpose was to forge an
agreement between Faisal and the Zionist movement to support Jewish
settlement in Palestine. The wishes of the Palestinian Arabs were to be
ignored, and, indeed, both men seem to have held the Palestinian Arabs
in considerable disdain. Weizmann had called them "treacherous",
"arrogant", "uneducated", and "greedy" and had complained to the British
that the system in Palestine did "not take into account the fact that
there is a fundamental qualitative difference between Jew and Arab".
After his meeting with Faisal, Weizmann reported that Faisal was
"contemptuous of the Palestinian Arabs whom he doesn't even regard as
Arabs".
In preparation for the meeting, the British had written to Faisal that
"we know that the Arabs despise, condemn and hate the Jews", but that
the Jewish race is "universal, all-powerful and cannot be put down".
Under such circumstances, the secret British communication contended,
Faisal was well advised to cultivate the Zionist movement as a powerful
ally rather than to oppose it. In the event, Weizmann and Faisal
established an informal agreement under which Faisal would support dense
Jewish settlement in Palestine while the Zionist movement would assist
in the development of the vast Arab nation that Faisal hoped to
establish.
Weizmann and Faisal met again later in 1918 in London and soon
afterwards at the Paris peace conference. On January 3, 1919, they
signed the written agreement which is known by their names, see Paris
Peace Conference, 1919.
The agreement committed both parties to conducting all relations between
the groups by the most cordial goodwill and understanding, to work
together to encourage immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large
scale while protecting the rights of the Arab peasants and tenant
farmers, and to safeguard the free practice of religious observances.
The Muslim Holy Places were to be under Muslim control.
The Zionist movement undertook to assist the Arab residents of Palestine
and the future Arab state to develop their natural resources and
establish a growing economy.
The Arabs accepted the Balfour Declaration of 1917 calling for a Jewish
national homeland in Palestine.
Disputes were to be submitted to the British Government for arbitration.
Faisal conditioned his acceptance on the fulfillment of British wartime
promises to the Arabs, who had hoped for independence in a vast part of
the Ottoman Empire.
The Faisal-Weizmann agreement survived only a few months, but it had a
profound efect on the history of the conflict as it was a historic
document of reconciliation between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East.
The outcome of the peace conference itself did not provide the vast Arab
state that Faisal desired mainly because the British and French had
struck there own secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 dividing the
Middle East between their own spheres of influence, and soon Faisal
began to express doubts about cooperation with the Zionist movement.
Within a year he was calling on Britain to grant the Arabs of Palestine
their political rights as part of his Syrian Kingdom.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal-Weizmann_Agreement
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