You can't listen to the jazz of Gilad Atzmon without being aware of his politics. He's an anti-Zionist Israeli who has been banned in his home country, writes Stuart Nicholson.

At a fraction over six feet, two inches tall and with aggressively short hair, Gilad Atzmon is a striking figure as he strides down a north London high street. Booming down a mobile telephone dressed in a red T-shirt, white shorts and sandals, he cuts a slightly surreal figure in the pouring rain, weaving in and out of a sea of umbrellas.

After a warm handshake he leads the way to his car while holding two conversations - with the person at the other end of the line in Hebrew and with me in English. After a brief drive from the tube station (more phone calls) we're in the tree-lined streets of London suburbia and, then, in his hall, stepping over abandoned saxophone cases and sheet music from the previous night's gig.

Atzmon is one of Europe's busiest saxophonists, at home in jazz, world music and rock. He is fluent in all kinds of Middle Eastern, Ladino - that is, Sephardic Jewish - and Balkan music, and he plays a variety of instruments. As one of the Blockheads he worked with the late Ian Dury, as well as with Paul McCartney, Robbie Williams, Sinead O'Connor and Shane MacGowan.

But the focus of his career is jazz, where he pledges allegiance to John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley and Mike Brecker, some of the music's most luminous saxophone stars. "I'm at heart a bebop player," he says over a cup of Turkish coffee, "but I was born in the wrong time and the wrong place" - the wrong time because "jazz, the musical language I understand the best, has become a retrospective art form rather than authentic expression" and the wrong place because "I was brought up in a small, colonial, nationalistic province in the eastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea."

Raised in Israel as a secular Jew he remained in the country of his birth until his early 30s, when he moved to London. He quickly established himself there as an exciting new voice on the European jazz scene, equally fluent on soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones, clarinet, flute, sol and zurna (the last two are Turkish reed instruments).

After the highly acclaimed Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble, from 2000, and Nostalgico, from 2001, his latest album, Exile, is a milestone in his musical career.

Atzmon's political views go straight to the heart of his music. He wants a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is based on equality and the Palestinian right of return, using Jewish and Arabic folk themes, swirling Coltrane- inspired modal jazz and hypnotic vocals to underpin his message.

His regular trio - called The Orient House Ensemble after the Palestinian Authority's ravaged east Jerusalem headquarters - features the talented young Englishman Frank Harrison on piano and the Israeli expatriates Yaron Stavi on bass and Asaf Sirkis on drums. He has augmented it with Mediterranean accordionists, Romanian flautists, a Tunisian oud player (the virtuoso Dhafer Youssef) and Palestinian singing (by Reem Kelani) to produce one of the most exhilarating and passionate jazz albums in years.

Passion, Atzmon believes, returns to jazz an ingredient that, though essential, has been missing since the 1960s. "For me jazz in the 1950 and 1960s was very politically motivated. Black American musicians were politically and socially concerned, and jazz reflected these issues, a cry for freedom."

His music, drawing its strength from reflecting the pain of the Palestinian people, conveys similarly intense emotions. "How is it that people who have suffered so much and for so long can inflict so much pain on the other?" he asks. "How can Zionists, who are motivated by a genuine desire to return, be so blind when it comes to the very similar Palestinian desire?"

On Exile Atzmon emphasises the similarities between Jewish and Arabic peoples - whom, he points out, lived in harmony for centuries - by mixing Jewish and Arabic melodies. "For instance," he says, "Al-Quds is an Arabic interpretation of an Israeli tune that became the anthem of the 1967 war. In our version we use [the Palestinian poet\] Mahmoud Darwish's lyrics, so the longing for a homeland goes far beyond racial and nationalistic boundaries.

"In April 2002 Jenin refugee camp was devastated by the Israeli army. On Jenin I want to take you there, based over a Jewish tune, and on the way I want to take you to Warsaw ghetto, Auschwitz - three takes to get into that cry of babies caught under the rubble."

After studying jazz and composition at Rubin Academy of Music, in Jerusalem, Atzmon also earned a master's degree in philosophy.

But it was during military service as a paramedic that he became a convinced anti-Zionist. He also became something of a Renaissance man. He has composed for modern ballet, films and radio, toured with Memphis Slim and supported international jazz names such as Jack DeJohnette, Michel Petrucciani and Richie Beirach.

In 2001 he wrote his first novel, A Guide To The Perplexed. Banned within weeks in Israel, it was subsequently published in almost 20 countries, including Britain, Russia, Japan and the USA. A satire on Jewish identity and exile, voyeurism versus involvement and the brittleness of reality, its darkly comic take highlights the dangers of racial purity and the position of the outsider in society.

But it is through music that Atzmon finds his greatest expression. His angry yet hauntingly beautiful pieces suggest yearning and passion in equal measure. Seamlessly melding a diversity of influences that at times explode with righteous fury, his music has a deeper meaning, lurking beneath the surface, that can be both devastating and unsettling. Yet the biting satire that runs through A Guide To The Perplexed also surfaces. "This next number is by a composer not very popular in the West for some reason," he will announce at a concert, then pause. "Osama bin Laden. Here's his hit song In A Suicidal Mood," he announces before launching into a delicate interpretation of Duke Ellington's In A Sentimental Mood on clarinet, to nervous laughter, applause and, you also sense, relief.

"Artists, people who are moved by aesthetic principles, can move people towards change," he says. "There is a very strong American tendency in my playing. I am also an exile. I was brought up in Palestine, a place where many, many cultures meet, and I feel very natural incorporating these elements into jazz. In Europe today you can hear so many artists and so many influences and so many different ideas that you cannot categorise it all. It just proves the point: freedom."

Exile by Gilad Atzmon & The Orient House Ensemble, featuring Reem Kelani and Dhafer Youssef, is on Enja Records. A Guide To The Perplexed is published by Serpent's Tail, £7.99 in UK