The group in question sent a letter to the Sultan saying “hey we’d like our old homeland back as a country, but if not we’d love a little autonomous province under your dominion.”
She ignores that it was a request. Maybe a big ask was chutzpah, but those who don’t ask don’t get
The very earliest Jewish settlers escaping Russian pogroms in 1882 openly proclaimed their plan to build a Jewish state in Ottoman Palestine by colonising it at which time Jews were less than 2% of the Pal population. It was hard going for the Jewish colonists until after WW1 when the Brits took over and gave them a helping hand.