Does experiencing critical political events during the transition from youth to adulthood produce distinctive and lasting political attitudes? We test for such cohort effects among Palestinians who came of age during the First Intifada against the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. We examine views toward those Palestinian Authority (PA) institutions that were created following this historic mass mobilization. At the time, these institutions were viewed, alternatively, as a source of hope for Palestinian self-determination or as a betrayal of the national cause. We analyze a pooled sample of 19 surveys conducted by the Center for Palestinian Research and Studies between 1996 and 2000 (n = 25,061). We find that men of the “First Intifada generation” are more likely than women of the same cohort and men of other cohorts to negatively characterize select PA institutions and to perceive the PA as corrupt. We further investigate how party affiliation conditions these results. Subsequently, we employ surveys from two later periods – during the Second Intifada (2001-2005), and after the political division of the West Bank and Gaza (2007-2016) – to examine whether the First Intifada cohort's views remain distinctive. This research clarifies how exposure to, and participation in, grass-roots resistance shapes views toward political institutions in an environment of enduring conflict and statelessness.