It’s easy to show solidarity with powerless victims who endure their suffering with stoicism. But Palestinians chose to break free of their cage, even if it shattered the image of perfect victimhood.

Had the Palestinians only accepted the UN partition plan in 1947, they could be celebrating their independence alongside Israel– is a common argument by those who fear the demise of the two-state solution. But partition was always an unjust and unworkable answer to the colonialist project of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine.

The old Hamas charter that Israel found so objectionable has long been defunct. Hamas’s new charter merely states what Hamas leaders have done for more than 10 years: a two-state solution on the ’67 lines, with the right of return of refugees. The updated charter is merely catching up to the party’s current politics, rather than it ushering in a change of policy.

We must reject the “who was here first?” argument about national rights in Palestine. Then we can focus on the real history. Our pasts intersected throughout the centuries. We must stop viewing Palestinian and Jewish histories as competing, mutually exclusive entities.