An Arab ‘Spring’ of a different kind? Resilience and freedom in the case of an occupied nation

Inspired by the on-going uprisings and revolutions across the Arab world, Palestinians used social media to call for mass protests throughout the Occupied Territory and their ‘host’ countries in the Arab world on 15 May 2011. Their underlying frustrations, however, have been of a different nature to those of their Arab brethren. The literature on the persistence of authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the debates on transitions to democracy have failed to shed light on the emergence of the cleavage within the two main rival factions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and on the impact of the enduring Israeli occupation on the Palestinians' political identity. This article aims to fill in this gap.