I think characterizing Zionism as "typical" European settler-colonialism obfuscates more than it illuminates. For one thing there is no metropole to which settlers might return as did the vast majority of pieds-noir after Algerian independence. In Palestine you had a people first escaping persecution, then murder. Again, not typical.

Zionism started with many different ideas of how the project might proceed. Population transfer wasn't universal (for the record, Herzl didn't write what you quoted in Der Judenstaat. The quote is from a diary entry of his, & not part of any policy adopted at that time; & certainly neither he nor anyone else would have seen Palestine as "densely" populated, given the Ottoman census of about 600,000 souls en toto).

I think it's only fair to take into account Palestinian reaction to Zionist endeavor: after word of the Balfour Declaration (which transferred no land, nor provided any sovereignty) reached Palestinian it prompted riots & anti-Jewish pogromist violence (Jaffa, Nebi Musa, later Hebron). At the 14th Zionist conference in Vienna David Ben-Gurion, later the architect of much ethnic cleansing, was ridiculed by revisionists because he demanded a "genuine alliance between Jewish & Arab workers". Plainly, his position changed. But Zionism didn't seek to "replicate" European genocide or forced transfer from its inception.

Today I would argue Israel has betrayed its Zionist ideal: Had Israel accepted the UN borders, offered fair compensation to those who lost, & provided support for Palestinian statehood I'm sure there would be many who still believed that wasn't enough, but Israeli leadership could say: With respect, this is what we can do. Accept it & move on.

And, who knows ... maybe.