Dvar Torah: Israel Is Excellent When Jews Live There

I came across an interesting Ohr Hachaim recently in parashat Eikev.

Devarim 11:12
A Land That Hashem, your G-d (אלוקיך), seeks out; the eyes of Hashem, your G-d, are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to year's end.

Ohr Hachaim
Moshe emphasizes the word (אלוקיך), "your G-d", to remind us that excellence of this land is conditional on the mutually exclusive relationship between Israel and its G-d. If Israel were to find itself in exile due to sins, the land would not prove excellent for whoever who dwell in it after Israel would be expelled.

So what the Ohr Hachaim is saying that Israel flourishes ONLY when the jews live in it. As we can see, Israel as a country did not become a thriving place to live until Jews moved back there. There is a passage from the book "Torat Eretz Yisrael" that emphasizes how desolate Israel was: "In a famous letter to his son, soon after his Aliyah to Israel, the Ramban mourns over the destruction on the Land, and the even greater devastation of Jerusalem. Also, l'havdil, the American writer, Mark Twain, notes in "Innocents Abroad," the diary he kept on a visit to Israel, that the roads were more rocky that the hillside and he describes the unusual poverty of the land."

This is in contrast to Israel today where its fruits are exported and the high-tech industry has boomed, etc. (see a previous video posted on my site: amazing true facts about Israel)

To conclude this post, I want to mention a gemara in Sanhedrin that bolsters the idea that fruits growing in Israel is a sign that the redemeption is near:

Sanhedrin 98a:
There is no clearer indication of the "End" that this: But you, O Mountains of Israel, you shall shoot forth your branches and bear your fruit for My people Israel, etc" (Ezekiel 36:8).

Rashi
Eretz Yisrael will yield fruit in abundance shortly before the redemption. That is the clearest sign of all of that the exile is about to end.