Resident Alien or Owner?

Originally published on Gimme Some Torah by Rabbi Eli Garfinkel on November 3, 2026.

Dead Sea, Neve Zohar, Israel—Photo by Keith Chan on Unsplash

Bereshit/Genesis 23:4

גֵּר־וְתוֹשָׁב אָנֹכִי עִמָּכֶם תְּנוּ לִי אֲחֻזַּת־קֶבֶר עִמָּכֶם וְאֶקְבְּרָה מֵתִי מִלְּפָנָי׃

“I am a resident alien among you; sell me a burial site among you, that I may remove my dead for burial.”

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Abraham says something strange in Gen. 23:4. Seeking to bury Sarah, he addresses the Hittites and says, “I am a resident alien among you; sell me a burial site among you, that I may remove my dead for burial.”

Hold on a second, back it up! Why did Abraham identify himself as a resident alien?! Wasn’t the whole point that God gave the land to Abraham and his descendants (us) as an everlasting inheritance? Rashi solves the apparent contradiction by quoting a midrash:

I AM A STRANGER AND A SETTLER WITH YOU — A stranger having come from another land, but I have settled down among you. A Midrashic explanation is: If you agree to sell me the land then I will regard myself as a stranger and will pay for it, but if not, I shall claim it as a settler and will take it as my legal right, because the Holy One, blessed be He, said to me, (12:7) “Unto your seed I give this land” (Gen. Rabbah 58:6).

This teaching has great relevance for the Israel-Palestine conflict. If the Palestinians would agree to share the land and respect the right of Jews to be sovereign in part of it, then peace would appear overnight. But the vast majority of them will not tolerate even the shadow of a Jewish state, so the war continues with both predictable and unpredictable results.

We can only imagine how the entire world would benefit from an agreement to share the land and create two secure, democratic states there. All it takes is for the Palestinians to say yes.

There does not need to be agreement the two peoples love each other—that may or may not come later. All that is needed is for peace to reign is for everyone to stop the killing, get out a map, and get to work.

And yes, Jewish hooligans in the West Bank need to stop their violent criminal activity immediately.

Rashi’s point is that force is only required in the absence of a will to share.

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