ABSTRACT
Why is it, then, that, in spite of ongoing, intense collective hardship and systematic mobilization into organizational frameworks of resistance, the Palestinian uprising crystallized in the specific time context of 1987? In order to understand the overall pattern of contention between Israelis and the Palestinians in the occupied territories and the unprecedented leap in the magnitude of contention, as manifested in the 1987 Intifada, it is imperative to probe the effects of changes in the structure of political opportunities/threats inside Israeli polity on Palestinian strategy: the construction of shared perception regarding an opportunity to act contentiously by Palestinian grassroots activists within the occupied territories.
