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The Guardian OCTOBER 27, 2015 - by Brian Eno

LETTERS: CULTURAL BRIDGES WITH ISRAEL HAVE FAILED

It's customary to speak about this crisis as though it's a deadlock, as though nothing is moving. But that's not true: every day armed Israeli settlers are illegally occupying more and more Palestinian land, and cutting away at the few freedoms the Palestinians still have left, with the tacit or overt backing of the army and the state. And every day the government is building new walls through neighbourhoods to fence the Palestinians off even more. Israel benefits from the crisis and uses it as cover - in the name of self-defence - to extend its control further and further into Palestinian lives. Now, having said during his election campaign that there will never be a Palestinian state, Netanyahu is trying to blame the Arabs for the Holocaust (and he's described as one of the more sane people on the right wing of Israeli politics). Does that sound to you like a good way to initiate a dialogue about a two-state solution? Or is it more likely the prelude to an Arab-free Israel?

I respect the good intentions of the signatories to this letter and I appreciate the desire for dialogue, but what kind of dialogue is realistically possible between a largely unarmed and imprisoned people whose land is disappearing before its eyes, and the heavily weaponised state that's in the process of taking it? Sounds a bit like the "dialogue" that the Native Americans were offered en route to being liquidated by another group of settlers.

BDS has the support of almost all Palestinians. It also has the support of many liberal Israeli Jews. In the current "Death to Arabs" climate, that's a courageous position for an Israeli to take - certainly not the easy option. For what little difference it will make, I'll stick with them.

Brian Eno
London