In his diary entries from 1895, Herzl unambiguously advocated for the forced emigration of Palestinians, writing “to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by denying it any employment in our own country… Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” He envisioned a program of strict ethnic segregation, denying Palestinians employment and economic opportunities, to compel their exodus.
Herzl believed this combination of ethnic separation and forced transfer, or ethnic cleansing, could be made to appear voluntary, masking the violent reality. This cynical blueprint of demographic engineering through discrimination and dispossession was perhaps his most insidious contribution to the ideology of settler colonialism.