Faisal–Weizmann Agreement

The Faisal–Weizmann Agreement was signed on 3 January 1919, by Emir Faisal (son of the King of Hejaz), who was for a short time King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria or Greater Syria in 1920, and was King of the Kingdom of Iraq from August 1921 to 1933, 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.

One or more of the Allies may have suggested that a representative of the Zionist Organization secure the agreement. The secret Sykes–Picot Agreement had called for an "Arab State or a Confederation of Arab States ... under the suzerainty of an Arab chief." The French and British also proposed an international administration, the form of which was to be decided upon after consultation with Russia, and subsequently in consultation with the other Allies, "and the representatives of the Shereef of Mecca."

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 an Arab Kingdom and Jewish settlement in Palestine, respectively. 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 allegedly reported that Faisal was "contemptuous of the Palestinian Arabs whom he doesn't even regard as Arabs".

In preparation for the meeting British diplomat Mark Sykes, expressing "entrenched pre-conceptions about the Jews" common in his time among the English elite, had written to Faisal about the Jewish people: "I know that the Arabs despise, condemn, and hate the Jews" but he added "I speak the truth when I say that this race, despised and weak, is universal, is all-powerful and cannot be put down" and he suggested that Faisal view the Jews as a powerful ally. In the event, Weizmann and Faisal established an informal agreement under which Faisal would support close Jewish settlement in Palestine while the Zionist movement would assist in the development of the vast Arab nation that Faisal hoped to establish.

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