Chaim Weizmann document to the Fifth Zionist Congress highlighting this need especially in the fields of science and engineering. This idea would later be crystallized in the foundation of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 1912. In 1904, Weizmann became a chemistry lecturer at the University of Manchester and soon became a leader among British Zionists. At that time, Arthur Balfour was a Conservative MP representing one of the districts of Manchester, and was also Prime Minister; the two met during one of Balfour's electoral campaigns in 1905–1906. Balfour supported the concept of a Jewish homeland, but felt that there
History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict defeating the Ottoman Turkish forces and occupied the Palestine region. The land remained under British military administration for the remainder of the war. On January 3, 1919, future president of the World Zionist Organization Chaim Weizmann and the future King Faisal I of Iraq signed the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement in which Faisal provisionally accepted the Balfour Declaration conditional on the fulfillment of British wartime promises of Palestine being included in the area of Arab independence. At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of Versailles, Turkey's loss of its Middle East Empire was formalized. After World War I and the collapse