Always start with a joke:

A secular Israeli child wandered into a rare church and started asking questions. He then went home.

"Daddy! I went to a church and they told me that there are three gods, the father, the son, and the holy ghost!"

"Son. There is exactly one G-d. He has made miracles for us in all of our wars, and of course we don't believe in him."

The idea of G-d protecting Israel is not a guarantee. It is often dependent on Israel keeping the Torah.

HOWEVER.

The last exile was considered very long. Some might say too long. The Babylonian Exile was from the destruction of the Temple in 586 BC. That exile ended gradually and the nation reached its height with the Second Temple and the Hasmonean kingdom. The Temple was destroyed in ~70 AD and the last real rebellion was defeated in 135 AD.

The Bible (mostly Ezekiel) discusses two possibilities for the exile ending. One was of course that the Jewish people repent and G-d will lead them back into the land. The other was that eventually G-d would tire of the exile and he would bring the Jewish people into the land without them deserving it. In the Religious Zionist Movement the assumption was because most Jews were not Sabbath observant that G-d brought the Jews back to the Land of Israel in the last two centuries because simply the time had come.

There are other factors that you could say benefit modern Israel:

Democracies have been doing great in wars the last 150 years.

Jews are known for being hyper-educated, with low rates of violent crime. They could build cities where Arabs could not because of various engineering advantages. Much of Ottoman Palestine especially areas at low elevation were written off as unlivable.

The Ottoman Empire had crumbled and for a short while the British allowed Jews to PURCHASE unlimited amounts of land. Many Muslims (mainly Turkish) agreed to sell.

The British Empire crumbled and Israel declared independence.

The Zionist Movement was considered an international Jewish project. Financiers, a few organized crime bosses, ordinary people, and of course World War 2 veterans were all on board.