Not a colonial project my ass. Herzl in fact attempted to pitch Cecil Rhodes (saw a toot in my feed mentioning him which I can’t find now) a plan to buy/charter Palestine.
The idea (July 1901): Rhodes's South Africans quietly buy up the Turkish debt (not his first attempt btw), then Herzl walks to the Sultan and offers debt relief for the land. He wrote: "His South Africans could privately buy up the bonds of the Turkish debt, and then I would tell the Sultan: here is the liberation from the debt in return for surrendering Palestine."
By January 1902 he'd drafted the pitch letter. Two asks: money ("What is being asked for is money") and a blessing ("put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan"). He even pre-wrote Rhodes's answer, ready to sign: "I, Rhodes, have examined this plan and found it correct and practicable."
[…] “And what I want you to do is not to give me or lend me a few guineas, but to put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan and to make the following declaration to a few people who swear by you: I, Rhodes, have examined this plan and found it
The letter never got sent. Herzl's London crew got busy reshuffling the finances, and on 20 January he wrote it "remains in the ink bottle." Rhodes died two months later. "Cecil Rhodes is dead," Herzl noted. "For a time I had him in mind as a fund raiser. I didn't manage to get together with him."
BTW, Notice a pattern? In 1917 the wording of the Balfour Declaration was worked out with the Zionists, Weizmann and Sokolow negotiating its wording alongside British officials.
Abdul-Wahab Kayyali, “Zionism and Imperialism: The Historical Origins,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3, Spring 1977, pp. 98–112. https://palquest.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/Zionism_and_Imperialism_The_Historical_Origins-Abdul-Wahab_Kayyali.pdf
