This paper seeks to advance the development of a subaltern-focused account of mandate Palestine by tracing the history of Palestinian ‘youth’ and their growing role and influence in local Arab politics between 1929 and 1936, including their place in precipitating the ‘Great Revolt’ of 1936-39. While many histories of Palestine during the period of the British mandate offer significant detail and analysis of Palestinian Arab politics, most focus almost exclusively on its elite dimension, and particularly the factional contestation between the rival Jerusalemite families of al-Husayni and al-Nashashibi. While the rivalries wracking the elite intimately affected the course of the nationalist struggle, this facet of Arab politics under the mandate has long obscured the importance of other forces within the national movement. This paper questions the established elite-centered narratives of the Palestinian national movement, especially certain historiographical tropes and proclivities, such as narrating the Great Revolt as a ‘spontaneous’ uprising, by exploring a broad set of questions concerning the interrelations between youth, various forms of political discipline, the national movement, Palestinian society, and political radicalization. I argue that in the paradoxically bleak and ebullient period between 1929 and 1936, youth underwent a major transition from a subordinate social force serving elites as the disciplinary arm of the national movement to a burgeoning, restive sociopolitical constituency that came to play critical roles in both opposing the notable strategy of gentlemanly politicking with the British and advancing a politics of anti-colonial militancy and confrontation. In short, youth went from serving as a disciplinary force largely adjunctive to elites to a constituency exercising a disciplining function within the nationalist movement, bolstering and even enforcing a national line that challenged and overturned elite prerogatives, tactics, and strategy. This was evident in youth unrest after the MacDonald letter of 1931, in their strong role in bringing about the popular demonstrations in 1933 against immigration policy (which targeted the British and resulted in weeks of open clashes with the colonial state), and in their role during the national strike in 1936 as enforcers of both everyday discipline (in markets and among the public) and movement discipline (vis-à-vis elite leaders seeking an exit from the strike). This inquiry further situates the ascendance of youth within the rise of mass politics in Arab Palestine, using youth as a window into the new horizontally-centered political formations and organizing that came to shape the national movement in the 1930s.