rabbi, a genuine Torah question, and i am asking it honestly because the slogans on both sides do not help. what does halacha actually say about eretz yisrael and the non jews living there?
1. the claim. the Torah gives eretz yisrael to the jewish people, that is clear from breishis on. but does that promise work like a property deed in halacha, meaning individual jews have a halachic right to specific land that individual non jews live on today, or is it a national destiny that does not translate into dinei mamonos between people?
2. kibbush then and now. in the times of yehoshua and the melachim there was a mitzvah of kibbush ha’aretz under specific conditions. does that mitzvah apply today, with no nevuah and no melech? and did the rambam even count it in the taryag?
3. the people living there. whatever the answer on sovereignty, what does halacha demand toward the non jews actually living on the land, their property, their homes, their dignity? gezel applies to the property of a non jew too, so how does any claim of yishuv ha’aretz sit next to that?
4. dina d’malchusa. does the modern state and its courts count as a malchus for these questions, and does that change anything halachically about land sales, disputes, and building?
5. what does the Torah want. leaving politics aside, what is the Torah’s own expectation for how a jew living in eretz yisrael should think about this: justice, shalom, yishuv, or none of the above?
i am not looking for a political answer, i am looking for the halachic one.
The first thing is to separate Eretz Yisrael belonging to Am Yisrael from ownership of a particular person’s house or field. The Torah repeatedly gives the Land of Israel to the Jewish people, and the Ramban counts לרשת את הארץ ולשבת בה as an ongoing mitzvah, not merely a historical promise to Yehoshua. The Rambam does not count that formulation as a separate mitzvah among the 613, and there is a large discussion about his position. But even according to the strongest view of yishuv Eretz Yisrael, that does not mean that an individual Jew can point to a house owned by a non-Jew and say, “God gave me Israel, therefore this house belongs to me.” National sovereignty and private property are two different halachic subjects. Gezel from a non-Jew is prohibited just as gezel from a Jew is prohibited. The Shulchan Aruch says explicitly: אחד הגונב ממון ישראל או הגונב ממון של עכו”ם (C.M. 348:2).
Historically, as I understand what happened in the period leading up to 1948, Jews who came during the British Mandate were purchasing land; they were not simply walking into Arab homes and taking them. At the end of the Mandate there was a political process involving Britain and the United Nations that created a Jewish state and proposed an Arab state as well. The Arab side rejected that arrangement and war followed. Some Arabs remained and their families are Israeli citizens today; many others left during the fighting, including communities that left expecting the Arab armies to prevail, and Israel did not subsequently permit them to return. Property left behind was then dealt with by the new government. Whatever political arguments people want to have about that history, that is a completely different phenomenon from an individual Jew stealing another individual’s property. A war, change of sovereignty and governmental disposition of abandoned or enemy property belong to the laws of governments and war, not to somebody privately taking his neighbor’s house.
As to kibbush, I would also be careful not to mix Yehoshua’s conquest with everything that happens today. The Ramban clearly understands possession of the Land as a mitzvah לדורות. But establishing the modern State was not simply a group of private Jews announcing a Torah war of conquest without a king or Sanhedrin. Sovereignty came through the political events at the end of the Mandate and was then defended in war. There are also important halachic sources dealing with national authority even when there is no king. Rav Kook writes that when there is no king, powers necessary for the general affairs of the nation can return to האומה בכללה the nation as a whole.
That brings us to dina d’malchuta. There are significant poskim who apply it to the modern State of Israel. Rav Ovadia Yosef rules in Yechaveh Da’at V:64 that even an elected government rather than a monarchy can have dina d’malchuta, and he applies that principle to Israel. That does not necessarily mean that every ruling of every secular court becomes Torah law; there is substantial discussion about how far that extends in private disputes. But land registration, taxes, zoning, building rules and the ordinary legal mechanisms by which property is bought and sold certainly cannot simply be ignored on the theory that “the Torah gave us the land.”
And finally, what does the Torah expect from Jews toward non-Jews living there? Certainly not theft, cruelty or humiliation. Chazal say מפרנסים עניי נכרים עם עניי ישראל, ומבקרין חולי נכרים… מפני דרכי שלום we support their poor, visit their sick and deal humanely with them because of darkei shalom (Gittin 61a). So there is no contradiction between believing completely that Eretz Yisrael is the national homeland and inheritance of Am Yisrael and simultaneously insisting that the individual non-Jew who lawfully owns his home has property rights and must be treated honestly and with dignity.
That is probably the simplest bottom line: the Torah’s promise of Eretz Yisrael establishes the national relationship between Am Yisrael and the land. It is not a private deed permitting one individual to steal from another. Yishuv Eretz Yisrael, honest property law, and darkei shalom are not competing values. They are all parts of the same Torah.