The Allied Powers meet in Paris to negotiate peace treaties with the Central Powers between January 1919 and January 1920.

At the conference, Amir Faisal (representing the Arabs) and Chaim Weizmann (representing the Zionists) set forth their cases.

Weizmann and Faisal reach a separate agreement on January 3, 1919, pledging the two parties to cordial cooperation; however, Faisal writes a proviso on the document in Arabic that his signature depends upon Allied war pledges regarding Arab independence.

Since these pledges will not be fulfilled to Arab satisfaction after the war, most Arab leaders and spokesmen will not consider the Faisal-Weizmann agreement as binding.

The Allied Powers meet at Versailles, near Paris, to negotiate peace treaties with the Central Powers beginning in January 1919.

Louis Marshall, lawyer and president of the American Jewish Committee, advocates treaty provisions that are intended to protect minority rights and are accepted by Romania, Poland, and other eastern European nations.

The Comite des Delegations Juives, formed at the Paris Peace conference and led by Dr. Leo Motzkin, a Zionist, submits two memoranda to the conference, which become part of the international treaties: a guarantee of the civil and cultural rights of Jews in various countries and the historic claim of the Jewish people to Palestine.

Nahum Sokolow leads the Zionist delegation.

At the conference, Amir Faisal, representing the Arabs, and Chaim Weizmann, representing the Zionists, present their cases.

Although Weizmann and Faisal reach a separate agreement on January 3, 1919, pledging the two parties to cordial cooperation, the latter writes a proviso on the document in Arabic that his signature is tied to Allied war pledges regarding Arab independence. (Since these pledges are not to be fulfilled to Arab satisfaction after the war, most Arab leaders and representatives have not considered the Faisal-Weizmann agreement as binding.)

The conferees decide that the conquered Arab provinces will not be restored to Ottoman rule.

The Paris peace talks open on January 18, 1919.

The First Palestinian National Congress, meeting in Jerusalem from January 27 to February 10, sends two memoranda to Versailles rejecting the Balfour Declaration and demanding independence.

Faisal, espousing a different view from that of the Palestinian National Congress, writes a letter on March 3, 1919, to Felix Frankfurter, a legal adviser to Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference, expressing his support for the Zionist cause:

"We Arabs...look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist Movement...We will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome."

Frankfurter, who during the immediate postwar period is one of the most active American Zionists, had served as secretary of war under President William Howard Taft

An International Commission of Inquiry to determine the attitudes of the inhabitants of Syria and Palestine toward the postwar settlement of their territories is appointed by the Paris Peace Conference at the request of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, following a suggestion by Dr. Howard Bliss, President of the American University in Beirut and a sympathizer to the Arab cause.

Venizélos naturally expects to reap the reward for his loyalty at the Paris Peace Conference.

Greece is permitted in May of 1919 to land troops in Smyrna (Izmir), the major port city in Asia Minor, with its large Greek population.

At the cost of splitting Greece, Venizelos had brought the kingdom into the war on the victorious side.

To justify the cost of this result and heal the wounds caused by the National Schism, he returns to the Megali Idea.

Venizelos goes to the Paris peace talks armed with the assurances he had received from the Allies during the war and focuses exclusively on territorial aggrandizement for Greece.

Venizelos shows all of his considerable diplomatic skills at the peace talks.

He woos the United States president, Woodrow Wilson, and Britain's Prime Minister David Lloyd George.

Venizelos quickly offers the services of the Greek military as policing agents and as peacekeepers in occupied territory.

Foreign leaders are indebted to the wily Venizelos for this assistance, but the offer fosters domestic discontent.

The Greek armed forces have been mobilized almost continuously since 1912, and the nation is becoming war weary.

In addition, Venizelos neglects urgent domestic issues as he puts all of his energies into winning the peace talks.

He will eventually pay for this neglect.

President Woodrow Wilson appoints an American panel, the King-Crane Commission, to investigate the disposition of Ottoman territories and the assigning of mandates.

After extensive surveys in Palestine and Syria, the commission reports intense opposition to the Balfour Declaration among the Arab majority in Palestine and advises against permitting unlimited Jewish immigration or the creation of a separate Jewish state.

The commission's report in August 1919 will not be officially considered by the conference, however, and will not be made public until 1922.

The Treaty of Versailles formally ends the Great War on June 28, 1919, with an Allied victory.