Chaim Weizmann that the issuance of the Balfour Declaration was the greatest single achievement of the pre-1948 Zionists. He believed that the Balfour Declaration and the legislation that followed it, such as the (3 June 1922) Churchill White Paper and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine all represented an astonishing accomplishment for the Zionist movement. On 3 January 1919, Weizmann met Hashemite Prince Faisal to sign the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement attempting to establish the legitimate existence of the state of Israel. At the end of the month, the Paris Peace Conference decided that the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire should be
President of Israel and journalist; and Chaim Herzog was a military leader, attorney, and diplomat. The first Israeli presidents were born in the former Russian Empire, which was true of much of the leadership in the early days of the state. The first native-born president, as well as the first with a Sephardi background, was Yitzhak Navon. The first president with a Western European background was Chaim Herzog, who originally came from Belfast, United Kingdom. The first president with a Mizrahi background was Moshe Katsav, who was born in Iran. All Israeli presidents from Yitzhak Ben-Zvi to Ezer Weizman were members of, or