Summary
The agreement of 3 January 1919 at London between the Amir Faisal, for the Arab Kingdom of Hejaz, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, for the Zionist Organisation: nine articles on goodwill between the Arab State and Palestine, a post-conference boundary commission, guarantees for the 1917 British Declaration in Palestine’s constitution, large-scale Jewish immigration with Arab farmers’ rights protected, religious freedom, Mohammedan control of the Mohammedan Holy Places, Zionist expert assistance to the Arab State, joint action before the Peace Congress and British arbitration — conditional, by Faisal’s signed reservation, on the Arabs obtaining the independence demanded in his 4 January 1919 memorandum to the Foreign Office (Faisal-Weizmann Agreement (1919), lines 77-125).
Details
- The preamble rests the agreement on “the racial kindship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people” and on collaboration in the development of the Arab State and Palestine as the surest means to both peoples’ national aspirations (line 77).
- Faisal’s reservation is part of the signed instrument as the file presents it: if the slightest modification or departure is made in relation to the memorandum’s demands, “I shall not be bound by a single word of the present Agreement which shall be deemed void and of no account or validity” (line 121).
- The memorandum the reservation depends on is not reproduced in the file, and the file does not state whether its demands were met.
Related pages
Faisal-Weizmann Agreement (1919), Amir Faisal, Chaim Weizmann, Balfour Declaration