The casual racism is a bit bracing but this was a perfectly reasonable explication of the situation to an intelligent observer (and the author was an Assyriologist) writing in 1919. Unfortunately it also turned out to be very, very wrong.

Then it introduces the problem of Palestine being promised to the Jews by Britain, and how that's a problem because it's currently occupied. What I find most interesting, is that it presents Husein as very reasonable and peaceful, and if I didn't know what the next 100 years of fighting would bring, I would think that the Palestinian conflict is very complicated, however it sounds like it can be all worked out peacefully by Hussein.

This article was written in July 1919. In January 1919, Chaim Weizmann, the most important Zionist leader, and Emir Faisal, Hussein's son, signed the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement. This agreement stipulated that the parties agreed to implement the Balfour Declaration within the proposed Arab kingdom.

Faisal made the agreement with the following reservation:

If the Arabs are established as I have asked in my manifesto of 4 January, addressed to the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, I will carry out what is written in this agreement. If changes are made, I cannot be answerable for failing to carry out this agreement.

In other words, "if we don't get our independent, unitary Arab kingdom, you're on your own." They did not get it. Syria was given to the French, Faisal was driven out of Damascus in a brief war, and Palestine was separated from Transjordan.

Anyways, that's getting somewhat ahead of ourselves. What of the problems of the Balfour Declaration itself?

The Balfour Declaration is quite short, and worth a read:

His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

This sounds pretty reasonable, and the author of this article describes it as such. But there's a problem.

Here's Weizmann's statement in the article:

"The Jewish land-holding must first of all be greatly increased. By democratic legislation this could be brought about, with due regard to the rights of the other inhabitants."

We know from the King-Crane Commission reports that if there was any 'democratic' position that the inhabitants of Palestine would take it was that they rejected additional Zionist settlement in Palestine. How, then, can a people "democratically" grant land when, if they were given real sovereignty, they would have forbidden the migration of the newcomers entirely?

The argument of many Zionists was that Palestine was so sparsely populated that the Arabs wouldn't mind. Palestine would be for the Jews "A land without a people for a people without a land." Might have been great in theory, unfortunately it just wasn't so.

I had never heard of Hejaz, but this article seems to take the position that it's a very big deal. Was it?

The Hejaz is the western coastal region of the Arabian peninsula north of Yemen. Its spiritual importance is as home to the two holiest cities of Islam, Mecca and Medina. All practicing Muslims pray in the direction of Mecca five times per day. Though the number who could afford or were able to do so was comparatively minuscule before modern travel, all Muslims who are able to do so are supposed to take the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their lives.

The author is right that at the time there was a hope in some quarters that the Kingdom of Hejaz might take on far more than merely symbolic or religious significance. I've already alluded to the expectation (in fact, the promise made under the Hussein-McMahon correspondences) that in exchange for their revolt against the Ottomans that Sharif Hussein would be rewarded with an independent Arab kingdom encompassing virtually all of the Arabian peninsula as well as contemporary Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan.

The author also mentions Hussein's aspirations to the Caliphate, which would at least in theory have made him both the temporal ruler of a "greater Arabia" but also the spiritual leader of, as the article's title suggests, the world's approximately 250,000,000 Muslims. As it happened, the Ottoman Caliphate clung on somewhat bitterly (as did the Turks). Ataturk did not initially favor abolishing the Caliphate, but did eventually do so in 1924. At that point Hussein claimed the Caliphate for himself.

He failed to keep it for a few reasons. Firstly, he was not the only claimant and his support was not as wide as this article might suggest. King Fuad in Egypt, for instance, also tried to convene a conference of religious scholars to get himself named Caliph. The Ottoman Caliph had also had a large base of support among the Muslims of greater India, forming the Khilafat Movement.

Secondly, the British didn't want it. For one thing, Hussein had basically refused to sign a protectorate agreement with Britain. But the British empire was also in a sense a Muslim empire. A majority of the world's Muslims lived within the British empire. While it didn't succeed, British leaders got awfully nervous during the war about the Ottoman Caliph's calls for global jihad. They had no desire to see the Caliphate once again in the hands of an independent power.

Lastly, the author refers to "the center of the peninsula is the home of the fickle wandering tribes or of oasis cities ruled by emirs who may admit the Sultan as first among equals, but will not submit their local autonomy without a struggle." That proved to be an understatement. By 1919 the central highlands of Arabia, the Najd, were already dominated by the Saudis. Their defeat of the Kingdom of Hejaz in 1925 led to the annexation of the Hejaz into Saudi territory and the abdication of Hussein. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would be proclaimed in 1932.

Hussein's children, however, were not left with nothing. As a result of a series of British compromises, Faisal was made king of Iraq while his [edit] brother Abdullah was made king of Transjordan. Collectively this was known as the Hashemite solution or the Sharifian solution, their all being part of the Hashemite dynasty and descendants of Sharif Hussein. The Hashemites ruled in Iraq until a coup d'etat in 1958 which saw the last king, crown prince and prime minister lynched and their bodies mutilated. More happily, the Hashemites still rule in Jordan. King Abdullah II is Hussein's great-great-grandson.

To your last question:

There was a brief mention of immigration to the US (I think from Syria) and how long ago they wanted the US to "assume guardianship and administration of Syria until such a time as the Syrians are able to perform the functions of full self-government". Is this accurate?

Before the immigration restriction acts of the 1920s there were a great many Arab migrants from "Syria." I put that in quotation marks because as far as I'm aware the overwhelming majority of them were Arab Christians from what would eventually become Lebanon but was at the time part of Ottoman Greater Syria (which also included Palestine and Jordan).

they wanted the US to "assume guardianship and administration of Syria until such a time as the Syrians are able to perform the functions of full self-government". Is this accurate?

Yes. The United States was not a belligerent against the Ottoman empire in WWI. After the publication of Wilson's 14 Points it was widely thought that the US was the only disinterested power left, particularly since the Sykes-Picot agreement had been publicized after the Russian revolution in 1917. It was basically agreed that the Arab Ottoman territories would need some sort of "guiding hand" by an outside power to prepare them for statehood, in what would eventually become the "Mandate" system. The question is who would be the mandatory power for each territory? The Paris conference itself did not settle the question, and was further complicated by the Turkish war of independence, but it did prompt the creation of the King-Crane Commission which did reveal that the people of Syria agreed that if there was going to be a mandatory power they wanted it to be the U.S. and not France or Britain (with some local exceptions, in parts of Lebanon, for example.)

Unfortunately the disinterest that made America so attractive as a mandatory power was in fact an actual lack of interest. There was no congressional or popular support for fulfilling a Wilsonian mandate, especially after Wilson's incapacitation, and the perhaps better known congressional rejection of the League of Nations (which assigned the mandates.)

Anyways, I hope that answers your questions, feel free to ask any others or if you'd like to be pointed to any additional texts. I actually did a couple /r/askhistorians podcast episodes on this topic of the Middle East settlements after WWI if they're of interest here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5gc8jq/askhistorians_podcast_076_the_end_of_world_war/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5iwgkp/askhistorians_podcast_077_the_end_of_world_war/

edit: typos, brain farts, and clarity