1919 Peace Conference in Paris
“Delegation Hedjazienne
Paris
1.March.1919
Dear Mr. Frankfurter,
I want to take this opportunity of my first contact with American Zionists to tell you what I have often been able to say to Dr. Haim Weizmann in the past.
We feel that the Arabs and Jews are cousins in race, have suffered similar oppressions at the hands of powers stronger than themselves, and by happy coincidence have been able to take the first step towards the attainment of their national ideals together.
We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully acquainted with the proposals submitted yesterday by the Zionist Organization to the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper. We will do our best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through: we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.
With the chief of your movement, especially with Dr. Weizmann, we have and continue to have the closest relations. He has been a great helper of our cause, and I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position to make the Jews some return for their kindness. We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East, and our two movements complete one another. The Jewish movement is national and not Imperialist, and there is room in Syria for both of us.
Indeed I think that neither can be really a success without the other.
People less informed and less responsible than our leaders and yours, ignoring the need for co-operation of the Arabs and Zionists, have been trying to exploit the local difficulties that must necessarily arise in Palestine in the early stages of our movements. Some of them have, I am afraid, misrepresented your aims to the Arab peasantry and our aims to the Jewish peasantry, with the result that interested parties have been able to make capital out of what they call our differences.
I wish to give you my firm conviction that these differences are not on questions of principle but on matters of detail such as must inevitably occur in every contact of neighbouring peoples, and are as easily adjusted by mutual goodwill. Indeed nearly all of them will disappear with further knowledge.
I look forward and my people with me look forward to a future in which we will help you and you will help us, so that the countries in which we are mutually interested may once again take their place in the community of civilized peoples of the world.
Believe me, Yours sincerely,
(Signed) Feisal
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From Meinertzhagen to Foreign Office
Date 12.9.19
...The ultimate aim of Feisal is, an Arab federation embracing Mesopotamia, and a Jewish Palestine, all under British mandate. ...
Their (the French) Syrian policy is based on Picot-Sykes agreement. They foster a contempt for Arabs’ indulgence in active propaganda against Zionism and Arab movement.
Excerpts from Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen’s report. He was Chief Political Officer for Palestine and Syria on General Allenby’s staff.. in view of the British Government’s schemes to partition the Jewish National Home by severance of Transjordan
Note. Transjordan refers to today’s Kingdom of Jordan.
Feisal, like Gandhi, get shot for their troubles, which tell us, that we are reacting like a flock of sheeps, no like a army of men.
No peace will ever be achieved if the masses don't start to quash the extremist within.
Georg