Moses Hess declares the restoration of a Jewish state a necessity both for the Jews and for the rest of humanity in an important book in 1862, Rom und Jerusalem, die letzte Nationalitätsfrage (Rome and Jerusalem: A Study in Jewish Nationalism).

Among Hess's many contentions in Rom und Jerusalem, the major one states that the Jews will always be a homeless people, never fully accepted by others, until they have their own country.

A friend and co-worker of Karl Marx, his book calls for the establishment of a Jewish socialist commonwealth in Palestine, in line with the emerging national movements in Europe and as the only way to respond to antisemitism and assert Jewish identity in the modern world. (Although Hess's synthesis of socialism and Jewish nationalism is ignored at the time of publication—the prosperity of European Jewry lessens the appeal of his work—it will influence such later Zionist leaders as Ahad Ha'am and Theodor Herzl, and will later become an integral part of the Labor Zionist movement.)

Ahad Ha'am's deep mistrust of the gentile world informs the cultural Zionism he espouses.

He rejects Herzl's notion that the nations of the world will encourage Jews to move and establish a Jewish state.

He believes that only through Jewish self-reliance and careful preparation will the Zionist enterprise succeed.

Ahad Ha'am's concept of a vanguard cultural elite establishing a foothold in Palestine will prove quixotic, but his idea of piecemeal settlement in Palestine and the establishment of a Zionist infrastructure will become an integral part of the Zionist movement.

The turning point in Theodor Herzl's thinking on the Jewish question occurs during the 1894 Paris trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, on charges of treason.

Dreyfus is convicted on December 22 and sentenced to life imprisonment on the infamous penal colony of Devil's Island, off the coast of French Guiana.

Herzl had become aware of the pervasiveness of anti-Semitism in French society while working as Paris correspondent for a Viennese newspaper.

He sees that emancipation, rather than dissipating anti-Semitism, has exacerbated popular animosity toward the Jews.

The tearing down of the ghetto walls places Jews in competition with non-Jews.

Moreover, the newly liberated Jew is blamed by much of non-Jewish French society for the socioeconomic upheaval caused by both emancipation and accelerated industrialization.

Herzl, born in Budapest on May 2, 1860, had grown up in an environment of assimilation.

He was educated in Vienna as a lawyer but instead became a journalist and playwright.

By the early 1890s, Herzl had achieved some recognition in Vienna and other major European cities, but is only identified peripherally with Jewish culture and politics.

He is unfamiliar with earlier Zionist writings (and he will later note in his diary that he would not have written his book had he known the contents of Leon Pinsker's Auto-Emancipation).

The Dreyfus trial sharply divides French society and unleashes widespread anti-Jewish demonstrations and riots throughout France.

To Theodor Herzl's shock and dismay, many members of the French intellectual, social, and political elites—precisely those elements of society into which the upwardly mobile emancipated Jews wish to be assimilated—are the most vitriolic in their anti-Jewish stance.

Theodor Herzl, radicalized by the Dreyfus Affair, regards assimilation as most desirable but in view of anti-Semitism, impossible to realize, as Jews will always be an alien element in the societies in which they reside as long as they remain stateless.

He believes that even if Jewish separateness in religion and social custom are to disappear, the Jews will continue to be treated as outsiders.

Thus, he argues, if Jews are forced by external pressure to form a nation, they can lead a normal existence only through concentration in one territory.

His pamphlet Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State") proposes that the Jewish question is a political question to be settled by a world council of nations.

He calls for the establishment of a Jewish state in any available territory—citing Palestine and Argentina as possible destinations—to which the majority of European Jewry will immigrate.

The new state will be modeled after the post-emancipation European state.

Thus, it will be secular in nature, granting no special place to the Hebrew language, Judaism, or to the ancient Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Another important element contained in Herzl's concept of a Jewish state is the enlightenment faith that all men—including anti-Semites—are rational and will work for goals that they perceive to be in their best interest.

He is convinced, therefore, that the enlightened nations of Europe will support the Zionist cause to rid their domains of the problem-creating Jews.

Consequently, Herzl actively seeks international recognition and the cooperation of the Great Powers in creating a Jewish state.

Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II rejects Theodor Herzl's proposal that Palestine be granted to the Jews, stating, "I cannot give away any part of it (the Empire) ... I will not agree to vivisection."

Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jewish writer, organizes the first World Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897.

Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II initiates a policy of sending members of his own palace staff to govern the province of Jerusalem, in response to the First Zionist Congress convened in 1897 by Theodor Herzl in Basel, Switzerland.

Most Jews living in Palestine have been concentrated in four cities with religious significance: Tiberias, ...

...Hebron, ...