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The Zionist Organization (ZO) was created at the instigation of Theodor Herzl in August 1897 during the First Zionist Congress held in Basel (Switzerland). Its foundation went along with the establishment of the Basel Program, stating its goals, which can be summed up as follows: to promote the settlement of Jewish people in Palestine; to unit the Jewish community on local and international levels; to strengthen the Jewish national sentiment; to intervene with government.
The Central Zionist Office, headquarters of the organization, was first set in Vienna (Austria-Hungary then). Afterwards, it moved to Cologne (Germany - 1905), to Berlin (Germany - 1911), to London (Great Britain - 1920) and, finally, to Jerusalem (1955).
In 1960, the Zionist Organization changed its name to World Zionist Organization (WZO).
Several bodies are coordinated by the WZO, as world zionist unions, territorial zionist federations and international zionist organizations.

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The Central Zionist Archives – the official archives of the institutions of the Zionist Movement (the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund, and the United Israel Appeal) and the numerous institutions that were established by, or alongside, these bodies – permanently preserves the files that were created during the activity of these institutions.

In addition, the Zionist Archives holds the files of the institutions of the Jewish population in Palestine before the establishment of the State (the Archives of the National Council, the Archives of the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA), the Archives of the Hadassah Medical Organization, etc.), of the offices of the World Jewish Congress in various countries, the remainder of the Archives of the Hovevei Zion and of some of the Zionist Federations around the world.

Ruhi al-Khalidi was a writer, teacher, activist and politician in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the 20th century.

He joined the Sultanic School in Istanbul in 1893, went on to teach in Jerusalem and held a number of administrative posts under Ottoman rule. He studied the philosophy of Islamic sciences and oriental literature at the Sorbonne University in Paris and was appointed professor at the Société des publications en langues étrangères (foreign language publications society) and Consul-General of the Ottoman Empire in Bordeaux (France) from 1898 to 1908.

In 1908, Ruhi al-Khalidi was one of three delegates elected to represent Jerusalem in the new Ottoman Parliament. He became Vice-President of the Parliament in 1911 and representative of the National Assembly of Jerusalem. He raised the issue of Zionism on several occasions during parliamentary sessions, warning of the potentially negative consequences of Jewish immigration and the continued sale of land that represented his homeland.

In particular, he was one of the pioneers in writing manuscripts on Zionism ("Le sionisme ou la question sioniste").”).

He also published other writings on a variety of themes that reflect his subjects of study: An Introduction to the Eastern Question (1897), Victor Hugoand A Comparative Study of Arabic and French Literature (first published in Arabic in 1904; republished in 1912), Chemistry Among the Arabs (Arabic, 1953).