I landed in Israel last Tuesday afternoon while the country was still voting. By the time the final results were in, the arithmetic was stark. Benjamin Netanyahu's bloc had won 53 seats, down from 68 in the outgoing Knesset. The Zionist opposition won 48. The Arab parties won a record 19 seats, almost double their previous 10. A government needs 61 seats. Nobody has them.

It is worth noting what the so-called change bloc actually is. Israeli politics is no longer a straightforward contest between right and left. Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman have all served in Netanyahu governments, while Yair Golan's Democrats remain firmly on the left.

What unites the bloc more than any single ideology is opposition to Netanyahu, and most of the Zionist parties in that bloc ruled out sitting in coalition with the Arab parties, although that position may yet shift.

Which leaves Israel facing another period of complicated political instability. In my view, three issues now demand something broader than another narrow coalition: integrating more Haredim into the army and workforce without asking them to abandon the values that define them; a serious reckoning with the failures that led to October 7 without turning that reckoning into another tribal war; and settling the role of the Supreme Court without returning to the constitutional rupture of 2023. These questions are too consequential to be resolved by half the country imposing its answer on the other half.

That internal division would be worrying at any time, but it is particularly dangerous now, because some of the external assumptions Israel has relied upon for decades are beginning to shift as well. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the United States, where seismic political changes are underway.

In this week's midterms, Democrats won both the House and Senate, and Israel figured prominently in the political conversation surrounding that result. In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won a U.S. Senate seat after campaigning against American support for Israel and against the Iran war. During the campaign he told NBC that Americans were paying more for groceries because of a war fought "at the behest" of the Israeli government.

Then, the morning after the election, Vice President JD Vance wrote on X that "the reason we lost is the war," referring to Iran, and cited polling of voters who had abandoned the Republicans. Among the four things those voters said would bring them back was: "change our relationship to Israel."

For years, erosion in American support for Israel was treated largely as a problem on the progressive left. Now similar language is emerging on parts of the populist right as well. And then, on election day itself, President Trump told Fox News that the roughly $4 billion America provides Israel each year would end at the close of 2026. Israel, he said, had become "a very thriving country" and no longer needed the money. Referring to El-Sayed, he added: "Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don't need it?"

What this means in practice remains unclear. The current U.S.-Israel memorandum provides $3.8 billion a year through 2028, and Congress ultimately appropriates the funds. But the political message was unmistakable: even an administration exceptionally friendly to Israel now sees American aid as something that carries a domestic political cost. At the very least, assumptions that governed the U.S.-Israel relationship for decades can no longer be taken for granted.

Which is why one phrase in Chayei Sarah felt unusually relevant, and really stuck out for me as I read through the parsha. Sarah dies, and Abraham needs somewhere to bury her. He approaches the Hittites and introduces himself with one of the most intriguing phrases in the Torah: גר ותושב אנכי עמכם — "I am a stranger and a resident among you."

The contradiction is deliberate. A stranger depends on the goodwill of the society around him, but a resident belongs there. Abraham, at 137, is somehow both. God had promised him the length and breadth of the land. God had also promised descendants as numerous as the stars and the sand. Yet Abraham owns no land at all, and his only son, Isaac, is thirty-seven, unmarried and childless.

Then he meets Ephron. Ephron performs generosity beautifully. In front of everyone he announces that Abraham may have the field and cave as a gift. But within a few verses the gift has become a sale for four hundred silver shekels.

Abraham does not complain. He does not accuse Ephron of hypocrisy, nor does he remind everybody that God has already promised the land to his descendants. He weighs out the silver in public and secures the property beyond dispute.

So what does he mean by "stranger and resident"? Rashi, quoting the Midrash, explains Abraham's intent: if you agree to sell me the burial plot, I will behave as a stranger and pay for it. If not, I am a resident and will claim it by right, because God has promised this land to my descendants.

Abraham holds both positions simultaneously. He is respectful of the society in which he lives and prepared to operate by its rules. But he does not confuse anyone else's goodwill with the source of his destiny. And it is this distinction that can give us hope in the moment we find ourselves in now.

Gratitude is not dependence. Friendship is not entitlement. And self-reliance is not ingratitude. For decades, America has been an extraordinary friend to Israel. That friendship has included diplomatic backing, military cooperation and billions of dollars in security assistance. Israel should remember all of this with gratitude even if the relationship now changes. But gratitude for yesterday cannot become a strategy for tomorrow.

Interestingly, Netanyahu himself told The Economist in January that he wanted to "taper off" American military aid within ten years, all the way to zero. Independence, in other words, was already the stated destination before Trump proposed dramatically accelerating the timetable. But independence is not achieved by declaration. It requires political maturity, internal cohesion, and the ability to take responsibility for the next step even when the full path ahead is unclear.

That is exactly what Abraham does. He does not receive the whole promise at once. He buys one field and one cave. Then, in the very next chapter, he sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac and secure the next generation. One step, then another. He never mistakes God's promise for permission to sit still.

That may be the most important lesson for Israel now. Israel today has more than Abraham could ever have imagined: a formidable army, a sophisticated economy, remarkable technology, and a population capable of extraordinary spirit. What it lacks at this moment is political cohesion.

The danger is not simply that America may give less. The danger is that Israelis will continue spending their strength fighting one another just as the external assumptions on which they have relied begin to change.

Ger ve'toshav is not a posture of weakness. It is a formula for maturity: be grateful to your friends, deal respectfully with the world as it is, and never outsource responsibility for your future.

Abraham did not know how the promise would unfold. He simply knew what his next responsibility was, and he acted. Israel does not need to know exactly what the next twenty years will look like either. It simply needs the confidence of the resident, the humility of the stranger, and the wisdom to know that both can be true at the same time.