Hydrostrategic Decisionmaking and the Arab ... - Yale University

WOLF 229Aaronson thought his ideas had been misrepresented in theofficial Zionist position, perhaps because he was not included in thefinal drafting. In an angry letter to Weizmann, he complained thatthe draft was “a disgrace and a calamity” (emphasis Aaronson’s) andexpressed shock that, for one of the delegates, “a ‘watershed’ is thesame as a ‘thalweg.’ Incredible, but true...” (unpublished letter,February 16, 1919, Weizmann Archives).In June of 1919 Aaronson died in a plane crash on his way to thePeace Conference and the Zionist proposals were submitted withoutrevision. Nevertheless, the importance of the region’s water resourcesremained embedded in the thinking of the Zionist establishment.“So far as the northern boundary is concerned,” wrote ChaimWeizmann later that year, “the guiding consideration with us hasbeen economic, and ‘economic’ in this connection means ‘watersupply’” (Weizmann Letters, September 18, 1919).The Arab PositionThe Arab delegation to the Peace Conference was led by theEmir Feisal, younger son of Emir Hussein of the Hejaz. Workingwith T. E. Lawrence, Hussein and his sons had led Arab irregularsagainst the Turks in Arabia and Eastern Palestine. After the war,Feisal had developed a relationship with Chaim Weizmann as bothprepared for the Peace Conference. After a meeting in 1918, Feisalsaid in an interview:The two main branches of the Semitic family, Arabs andJews, understand one another, and I hope that as a resultof interchange of ideas at the Peace Conference, which willbe guided by ideals of self-determination and nationality,each nation will make definite progress towards the realizationof its aspirations (cited in Esco Foundation 1947).Feisal also initially expressed support for Jewish immigration toPalestine, in part because he saw it as useful for his own nationalistaspirations. At a banquet given in his honor by Lord Rothschild in1918, he pointed out that, “No state could be built up in the Near Eastwithout borrowing from the ideas, knowledge and experience ofEurope, and the Jews were the intermediaries who could best translateEuropean experience to suit Arab life” (Esco Foundation 1947).In a meeting later that year, Feisal tried to enlist Weizmann’ssupport against French policies in Syria. Weizmann in turn outlinedZionist aspirations and, “asserted his respect for Arab communalrights” (Sachar 1969). The two also agreed that all water and farmboundary questions should be settled directly between the two parties.YALE F&ES BULLETIN