Talk:Faisal-Weizmann Agreement
From Academic Kids
Some citations
- Weizmann's opinion of the Palestinian Arabs was given in a long letter to Arthur Balfour, dated 30 May 1918. The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann (ed. Weisgal) Series A, Volume VIII, p197-206. Some more extracts: "The Arabs who are superficially clever and quick witted, worship one thing and one thing only - power and success."; "the treacherous nature of the Arab...He screams as often as he can and blackmails as much as he can."; "This system does not take into account the fact that there is a fundamental qualitative difference between Jew and Arab. The Turk, being himself of inferior culture, saw in the Jew a superior to himself and to the Arab, and so by virtue of his intelligence and his achievements the Jew held a position in the country perhaps out of proportion to his numerical strength. The present system tends on the contrary to level down the Jew politically to the status of a native, and in many cases the English Administrator follows the convenient rule of looking on the Jews as so many natives."
- Weizmann's report on Faisal's opinion of the Palestinian Arabs is from a letter to his wife dated 17 June 1918 (original in Russian). I quoted the English translation from the same collection, Series A, Volume VIII, p210.
- British letter to Faisal in advance of the Faisal-Weizmann meeting: Segev, One Palestine, Complete, p110-111. Segev cites Reinharz's biography of Weizmann, p255.
All of the above are well known and frequently cited.
In interpreting the agreement, it is important to remember that it was all done under British eyes. It seems to be a common belief that the actual written text was the work of T.E. Lawrence, but I didn't mention that because I don't know if there is solid evidence for it. You can see the British influence in the way the actual role of the Jews in Palestine is vague and refers back to the Balfour Declaration. Just as in the B.D., there is no explicit mention of Jewish sovereignty and this was entirely deliberate.
--Zero 23:50, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thank you for the citations.
Clearly the British played a large role in the formation of the documents as did the other parties involved. Everyone expected to gain from it. That is often the nature of agreements between parties.
Still it needs to be asked what relevance Weizmann's quotes above have to the agreement. What light do they provide that they should be included on this particular page? OneVoice 01:18, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- A deliberate choice was made by the Zionists to not try to strike an agreement directly with the Palestinian Arabs. There were a variety of reasons for that and one was the attitude (common amongst Europeans of the time) that the Arabs were a primitive race (Weizmann said "at least four centuries behind the times") and one does not negotiate with primitives. Many of the British felt the same way (which could be included in the article). One should also ask the question of why Faisal was so easily persuaded to give up Palestine despite it having earlier been promised to his father. The two reasons given here are not the whole story but are key parts of it. --Zero 02:53, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The page does not give the impression that its a European attitude or a British attitude but rather a Jewish or Zionist attitude only. How can we address this?
What does "support close Jewish settlement" mean....cant parse the word 'close' in this phrase...from the page, of course. OneVoice 02:58, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- "Close settlement" was a common expression back then; e.g. it is in the Mandate text twice. The word "close" is used in the sense of "dense", so "close settlement" means settlement by a lot of people. I'll answer the other question later. --Zero 04:08, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
If close is dense, then that would mean a concentrated population irrespective of size, so long as enough people are there to obtain a density of population. For example: if 1000/mi2 is common, then one might say that dense is 2000/mi2, and a minimum population of 2000 (this is rough) would be needed. OneVoice 10:38, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
