Yusuf Dia Pasha al-Khalidi (1842–1906; Arabic: يوسف ضياء الدين باشا الخالدي, Yousef Ḍiya’ ad-Dīn Bāshā al-Khalidī) was a prominent Ottoman politician who served as mayor of Jerusalem during several non-consecutive terms in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

At the age of 17, he wrote of his thoughts about the state of the world, personal dignity and the individual's quest to become free, in the context of meditations on why the Ottoman Empire was being increasingly surrounded by European powers pilfering the region of its wealth and identified the cause of the situation to be the disparity in knowledge between the region and Europe.

The interests of the country could only be defended by dropping frivolous studies and acquiring scientific, historical and philosophical knowledge.

[6] Yousef's brother Yasin persuaded him after two years in the Protestant college to attend the Imperial Medical School in Constantinople, capital of the Empire.

[1] Al-Khalidi played a key role in the opposing political factions established to prohibit the Ottoman Empire's attempts to violate the constitution.

[3] Compelled by a "holy duty of conscience" to voice his concerns that Zionism would jeopardize the friendly associations between Muslims, Christians and Jews, he wrote a letter On 1 March 1899 to Zadok Kahn, the chief rabbi of France, to prevail on Zionists, through Kahn's offices, to leave the area of Palestine in peace.

And what a marvellous spectacle it would be if the Jews, so gifted, were once again reconstituted as an independent nation, respected, happy, able to render services to poor humanity in the moral domain as in the past!

This reality, these acquired facts, this brutal force of circumstances leave Zionism, geographically, no hope of realisation."

On 19 March 1899 Herzl replied to al-Khalidi arguing that both the Ottoman Empire and the non-Jewish population of Palestine would benefit from Jewish immigration.

As to al-Khalidi concerns about the non-Jewish majority population of Palestine, Herzl replied rhetorically: "who would think of sending them away?"

As I have said and written many times: These places have lost forever the faculty of belonging exclusively to one faith, to one race or to one people.

The universal peace which all men of good will ardently hope for will have its symbol in a brotherly union in the Holy Places.

Scholar Rashid Khalidi notes that this sentiment was penned 4 years after Herzl had confided to his diary the idea of spiriting the Arab population away to make way for Jews: We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us.