The first move to secure the Palestine Mandate for Britain and carry out the Zionist scheme under it was made at the Peace Conference in Paris in 1919. Here again the scales were crushingly weighted against the Arabs. The Zionists and their friends were there in great strength; the Arabs, with one solitary exception, non-existent. Not only were all the Zionist leaders in Paris to press and canvass their cause, but most of the leading representatives of the Great Powers on the Peace Conference had already been won over to the Zionist cause, and had come to the Conference determined to ensure its triumph. Mr. Lloyd George, Lord Balfour, Lord Milner, President Wilson himself, General Smuts and Lord Cecil were now all protagonists of Zionism, pledged to its support. For years these gentlemen had been in close touch with the Zionist leaders, listening to their palusible arguments, and seeing the matter entirely from the Zionist point of view. Probably not one of them had seen a single Arab, while many of them had never heard the Arab objections to Zionism, and did not realise the implications of the scheme to which either from misguided humanitarian sympathy, or from considerations of a more selfish and material nature, they had given their support. As for the Arabs, they were represented at the Peace Conference e by the solitary figure of Prince Feisal, visiting Europe for the first time, out of his element in the maze of international diplomacy and intrigue, without any friends or allies - T.E. Lawrence and one or two subordinate members of the Foreign Office excepted - and having to address the Peace Conference in Arabic, with Lawrence unofficially interpreting for him.
In these circumstances the Arab case had no chance whatever. When Feisal spoke, what he had to say reached his hearers only at second-hand, and in any case, the ears on which it fell were already largely impervious to his plea. Anyhow no notice whatever was taken of the Arab case as presented in Feisal's speech and in the official document of Arab demands which was deposited with the officials of the Conference. Feisal's endeavours to postpone, at least, a decision on Palestine were destined to be fruitless, for the Zionist leaders had already arranged with the Conference chiefs for their own form of Mandate in Palestine, and by 30th January, 1919 the division of Syria between Britain and France was already tacitly agreed upon. Palestine as the southern part of Syria was to be arbitrarily severed from the country of which it had formed a part for centuries, in order that: (a) the rival imperialisms of Britain and France should be satisfied and (b) the Zionist scheme should be carried out in Palestine under British protection and with British help.
Nor did the anti-Zionist Jewish leaders who appeared before the Peace Conference fare any better than the Arab representative. Their spokesman was Professor Sylvain Levi, who held a chair in the College de France. He had not long returned from Palestine, where he had gone to represent French Jewry on the Zionist Commission that went there immediately after the British Occupation. Professor Levi had joined the Commission in the belief that it was a relief organization whose object was merely to succour the Jews in the Holy Land. Having been undeceived by what he saw in Palestine, he came back, a witness of unmatched experience and integrity, to explain to the Peace Conference the true facts and implications, but he found no favour with the statesmen who had been so completely won over by the Zionist leaders. We have the testimony of Mr. De Has, the historian of the Zionist movement that "at the formal hearing given to the Zionist leaders, the members of the Supreme Council not only listened approvingly to the Zionist claims, but they showed marked displeasure at a French-Jewish anti-Zionist". Similar coldness greeted the Memorandum presented to the Conference by Mr. Lucien Wolf on behalf of the Board of Delegates of British Jews.
From the Zionist case as it was prepared and presented to the Peace Conference by Dr. Weizmann, Mr. Sokolov and Dr. Stephen Wise, with the knowledge and support of the American and British Governments, two things stand out very clearly: first, that the Zionist scheme was one for the entire, if gradual, seizure of Palestine by the Jews, and for its conversion thus into a Jewish state; second, while this was the real object, and while the British and American Governments knew that it was the real object and approved of it, opinions among the conspirators differed as to how much of this intention it was wise to stake openly at that stage, and how much should be concealed until it had become a fait accompli. President Wilson, who was rather the dupe of this conspiracy than an active participant in it, showed his naivete and ignorance of the implications, as well as of the diplomatic chicanery required for the occasion, by innocently stating that "he concurred in the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine". Similarly M. Tardieu, sailing with French contempt for hypocrisy through face-saving formalities, declared bluntly that there would be no objection by France to the Formation of a new Zionist state in Palestine. The permanent officials of the British Foreign Office however (in spite of their Ministerial Chief's delight at the success which his plans were encountering) were alarmed at this premature letting of the cat out of the bag. The astute Dr. Weizmann himself declined to claim immediately the National state which President Wilson and M. Tardieu were willing to present him with on the spot. "We do not", he said in an interview printed in the Times of the 1st March, 1919, "aspire to found a Zionist state. What we want is a country in which all nations and all creeds shall have equal rights and equal tolerance. We cannot hope to rule in a country in which only one-seventh of the population at present are Jews. We understand that the Peace Conference has practically decided to place Palestine under the League of Nations. This is entirely in accordance with our wishes, but we go further. We indicate the Power which we wish to be the Mandatory of the League. That Power is Great Britain. The British Imperial system which has provided for almost every description of state, can take into itself without friction a Jewish Palestine held intrust for the League of Nations". Further on in the same interview the whole latent purpose came out. The Zionists, said Dr. Weizmann, wanted Palestine to become as quickly as possible "as Jewish as England is English".
A similar statement had been made by Dr. Weizmann in answering a question put to him by the American Secretary of State at the Peace Conference. Finally, Dr. Weizmann laid bare the entire idea of the gradual, as opposed to the immediate, annexation of Palestine by the Zionists. "We have never proposed", he said, "that a Jewish minority should rule over the rest. Palestine will only become a Jewish self-governing commonwealth when the majority of its inhabitants are Jewish".
Thus Britain was to occupy Palestine in order to enable the Jews first to become a majority by immigration and then, having become a majority, acquired most of the land in the country by various forms of purchase, transformed its natural character by a cultural invasion and colonised it in every sense of the word, to set up a Jewish National State. As for the Arabs, the people of the country who were to be thus dispossessed and deprived of their birthright in their own land, Dr. Weizmann dismissed them in a sentence which, read to-day, exposes with mocking irony the complete unrealism, if not disingenuous casuistry, of both the Zionist leaders of that time and those European and American statesmen who listened to them. "I see no reason", said Dr. Weizmann in that same interview given to the Times "for differences between ourselves and the Arab non-Jewish population. There is plenty of room for us both in Palestine. It will hold five or six millions properly developed, whereas the present population is less that 700,000. It is not likely that there will ever be an Arab question Palestine". The disingenuous part of this statement is its deliberate concealment of the fact that the ultimate issue was one of sovereignty and not merely a question of how much room there was in the country, or what sort of population it could support. If Dr. Weizmann and the other Zionist leaders who were lobbying the Peace Conference really thought that the Arabs would not oppose this attack o their national existence in Palestine, they were entirely ignorant of the realities involved, and the statesmen who listened to them were being grossly misled. If on the other hand they and their supporters knew, as anyone with any knowledge of human nature and national psychology, let alone the facts, must have known, that the Arabs would oppose this attack and have to be suppressed by force, then they were guilty of something infinitely worse than ignorance. They were guilty of betraying every democratic principle which had been invoked by the Allies during the war, and violating the entire moral code by which the Peace Conference professed to be ruled.