This paper examines modes of extralegal justice during two periods of widespread anticolonial uprising in Palestine: the 1936–39 revolt against British rule and Zionist colonization; and the 1987–91 intifada against Israeli rule. During each uprising, Palestinians disengaged from colonial institutions—including the police and courts—and turned to alternative practices, drawing on traditions of customary law (‘urf) and communal reconciliation (sulh) that predated colonial rule, to serve Palestinian communities and resist British and Israeli authorities. Sulh and related forms of conflict resolution accrued legitimacy by referring to practices predating the Zionist settler-colonial project, but other factors also made them powerful tool within Palestinian uprisings. Sulh’s decentralized and personalized authority, which derive from mediators’ status and disputants’ willingness to engage them in reconciliation, proved well suited to the necessities of anticolonial struggle. Reconciliation practices also fortified communities by emphasizing the equality of disputants and an ethos of communal (rather than individual) justice. Meanwhile, anticolonial leaders—many of them marginal within pre-uprising power structures—gained authority by engaging in mediation, integrating new social formations into preexisting traditions and offering stability in highly unstable periods. Sulh thus conferred legitimacy on decidedly untraditional power arrangements. Palestinians during the 1936–39 revolt and the intifada also employed disciplinary violence to coerce those who benefited from the colonial order to abandon it and to ensure adherence to alternative systems. Groups formed to safeguard the uprisings, their ranks drawn largely from economically marginalized young men. These police-like forces frequently engaged in uneasy relationships with those they policed, especially those who found the material impact of anticolonial revolt onerous. At times, they also clashed with the political leadership of the uprisings, which sought to direct and restrain the activity of youth activists. In each uprising, as internal and external pressures exacerbated divides within Palestinian society, violence became increasingly undisciplined, exposing gender and class hierarchies obscured by sulh’s inclusive rhetoric. This paper draws on memoirs and diaries, press accounts, oral histories, and rebel communiqués from both uprisings to examine the tensions that emerged between the struggle for sociopolitical transformation, on the one hand, and efforts to assure Palestinians’ security and stability, on the other. In doing so, it highlights the complex intra-Palestinian dimensions of these uprisings, illuminating local strategies for—and obstacles to—forging alternatives to colonial justice.