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 wholly separated and the newly conceived mandate-system applied to them. Weizmann stated at the conference that "the Zionist objective was gradually to make Palestine as Jewish as England was English" Shortly thereafter, both men made their statements to the conference.