David Landau, who died on Tuesday aged 67 after a long battle with cancer, was a rare writer and journalist in a country that does not lack for polemicists.

He bridged social divides that to others were uncrossable chasms. As a deeply religious editor of Haaretz, Israel's most secular intellectual bastion, he was a sworn believer in peace and human rights who nevertheless tried to open the newspaper to voices from the settler and Charedi communities. He was a veteran Jerusalemite who revelled in the cosmopolitanism of Tel Aviv, a man of the world at home in the most parochial corners of Israel and the diaspora.

Born in north London, in 1947, his entry to journalism was a baptism of fire. In 1967, as a foreign yeshivah student in Jerusalem, he volunteered to take the place of men called up for reserve service on the eve of the Six-Day War, and was sent to the Jerusalem Post.

Within days he was reporting from the front, following the victorious IDF through east Jerusalem and the West Bank. In an essay for the JC in 2008, he wrote: "I remember vividly the intoxicating sweetness of that (pseudo-) messianic moment. Now it tastes like ashes."

In 1969, he returned to Israel for good with his new wife, Jackie, and went back to the Post where he was made diplomatic correspondent. His irreverence and awkward questions to senior politicians often scandalised the editors at the staid publication. During peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt, he scored what he considered his greatest scoop when he became the first Israeli to interview President Sadat.

Left without a full-time job at the age of 43, he made the difficult transition to writing in Hebrew and worked for two years at Maariv daily and in 1993 was hired by Haaretz where he went on to become the founding editor of the paper's English edition. He was appointed editor-in-chief in 2004, which he held for four years.

In his last years he completed a critically-acclaimed biography of Ariel Sharon, continued to write columns for Haaretz and was the Economist's Israel correspondent.

Last year, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his services to peace and relations between Israel and Britain.

He is survived by his wife, Jackie, three children and eight grandchildren.