From the river to the sea, Jews and Arabs must forge a shared future | Kenan Malik

Each side in this bitter conflict needs to recognise the other's fears and aspirations

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," runs a Palestinian slogan. Originally a call for a secular state in historic Palestine between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean, it soon became a sectarian slogan, deeply inflected by antisemitism. In the hands of Hamas, it is a call for the driving out of all Jews from the region; at best, a demand for ethnic cleansing, at worst for genocide.

The founding charter of Likud, Israel's leading centre-right party, and the party of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, echoes the same words but from the opposite perspective: Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty". It has continually blocked any workable two-state solution.

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