Before the 1880s, a few Jewish writers had started to formulate a Jewish nationalism. These early Zionists asserted that the modern state had emerged as the social compact of the modern era, and thus Jews would need a state of their own if they desired full actualization as individuals. As ethno-linguistic nationalism developed through the 1870s and 1880s, a state was deemed necessary for full actualization of a people.

Early Zionists began to believe that assimilation in European society would never work, and that the "Jewish Question" would only be solved if Jews lived in a country where they were the majority. But where would that be possible?

Palestine was the answer they came to –for both religious and political reasons. Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel in ancient biblical times, had held a sacred place in the Jewish religion since the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE. Many centuries prior to the 1800s, the liturgy shifted, and the desire to return to Eretz Yisrael had become a spiritual, rather than physical, return. Indeed, few European Jews actually desired to leave Europe for the Middle East before the onset of Zionism, but the concept of Eretz Yisrael still played a central role in religious narrative and prayer.

Politically, the Ottoman Empire was losing steam and pieces of the Empire looked up for grabs. A small group of Jews, named the Lovers of Zion, had already begun immigrating to Palestine, but Zionist settlement didn't start in earnest until the wave of anti-Semitism in the 1880s and 1890s.

The first Zionist settlers arrived in 1882. No one in Palestine was pleased about this – not the Jews already living there (in relative peace with their neighbors), not the Turkish authorities (who felt their power threatened by the influx of Europeans), and not the local Arab inhabitants (who began losing land to the Zionists). In 1893, the Sultan thought he'd put a halt to the whole thing – he banned Russian Jews from immigrating to Palestine and from purchasing land. In reality, this barely deterred the process.