ABSTRACT
In addition to weak organizational structures at the local level, political constraints at the national level also limited widespread participation. Political opportunities refer to the “changes in the institutional structure or informal power relations of a given national political system” (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996: 3), which either create opportunities that “encourage people to engage in contentious politics” (Tarrow 1998: 20) or create constraints that discourage contention. In the case of Palestinian politics, changes in formal Palestinian political institutions prior to the second intifada discouraged contention, while shifts in the informal power relations between Palestinian political parties during the second intifada further hindered opportunities for engagement. In addition to Palestinian political constraints, the movement was also limited by Israeli political constraints and the perpetuation (and indeed, intensification) of the occupation’s policies. This chapter explores how these variables limited action mobilization, indicating that fragmentation was rooted not only at the movement level but at the national level(s) as well.
