After the Uprising: the Intifada-Oslo Generation and Attitudes Toward the Palestinian Police

Abstract

Does experiencing a mass uprising during one’s formative years shape attitudes toward post-uprising institutions? Existing research on cohorts has not examined settings of ongoing statelessness. We focus on Palestinians who witnessed the First Intifada and subsequent Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during their youth-to-adulthood transition. Analyzing a pooled sample of surveys conducted between 1996 and 2000, we observe that men from this cohort – using a youth-based definition of one’s formative years – evaluated the Palestinian police more negatively than did other men, ceteris paribus. We test two, potential explanations. We find support for the proposition that men from this cohort held distinctive views about coercion and resistance that shaped their evaluations. We conclude that experiencing mass mobilization and transition during one’s formative years can influence attitudes, but additional work is needed to test for their long-term endurance. Further, a younger operationalization of one’s impressionable years may be salient in settings of insecurity.