The contexts in the Philippines back in 1898 when it declared its independence were fundamentally different than they are in Israel/Palestine today, something your article seems to have ignored!

I too believe in non-fiction, and the power of arts more broadly to shed light on human struggles. Whether in the form of words (spoken or written), theater or motion pictures. I remember hearing the late Juliano Mer Khamis say in an interview ” We believe the third intifada, the coming intifada, should be cultural, with poetry, music, theater and cameras”. I think the work of people like Peter Kosminsky, Annemarie Jacir, Cherien Dabis and others in modern days has had an impact on how people in the West are perceiving this intractable conflict. In the realm of literature, the Palestinians I argue, have produced serious fiction, the work of the late Ghassan Kanafani like Return to Haifa and more recently Raja Shehadeh’s are widely read by people interested in the Palestinian issue. But unlike the Spaniards and Filipinos, Israelis and Palestinians are speaking about two different things when the use the word “occupation”. The Spaniards, I would argue, never called the Philippines Spain, nor did France call Lebanon, Syria, or Francophone Africa France!

To those Israelis who recognize “the occupation”, it’s what was taken on June 5, 1967. To Palestinians, it’s the land from the river to the sea.

The Palestinians have led, I argue, two unsuccessful uprisings “revolutions”, if you will. They did not succeed, not because they lacked the motivation or the momentum, and for the that they need to literature to help them build that “sense of community”, necessary for a successful revolution, but rather due to the aforementioned differences. The Spaniards, the Brits, the French and other colonial powers had countries to go back to after they had pulled out of their former colonies. To Israelis, Israel is a point of no return.

fanned the flames of the revolution that eventually overthrew the Spanish and led to an independent Phillippines

quite jolting if not per se inaccurate. It was the US military that drove out the Spanish in 1898 and they immediately assumed the role as the new colonialist. The Phillippine patriots tried to resist but they could not prevail in the face of the US military — over the next 6 years the US suppressed their resistance and in the process killed about 10% of the population (300,000 dead Phillipeans out of a population of 3 million). Finally the surviving patriots gave up and submitted to US domination.

It took another 50 years before they achieved independence and it was not until the 1980s that American military occupation of that country was lifted.