Blending travel writing, reportage, and personal reflection, Hillel Cohen walks throughout East Jerusalem and the West Bank in search of conversation to understand one of the world’s most enduring conflicts.

In this powerful illustrated memoir, journalist and scholar Hillel Cohen recounts his travels in Palestine and Israel as a youth. Fervent and unafraid, the teenage Cohen wanders through refugee camps, Palestinian villages, and homes with confidence because to do so is his birthright—or so he has always been told. But outside the segregated city of Jerusalem and its tight-knit Jewish community, his certainty begins to waver. Each shared meal and open-hearted discussion call into question the foundational beliefs of his upbringing—as do the many losses he witnesses along the way.

With candor and humanity, Cohen’s coming-of-age following the Six-Day War in a newly occupied land offers unflinching reflections on identity, memory, ethics, and nationhood—and brings into sharp relief the human complexity behind the events that led to October 7, 2023, and Israel's subsequent destruction of Gaza. With vivid illustrations and graphic panels by Yana Bukler, Between the River and the Sea looks beyond the political to ask how we got here—and where we’re going.