While the Arab populations of surrounding states erupted in protest, demanding ‘freedom, dignity and social justice,’ Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), have remained quiescent. This is all the more puzzling as historically, Palestinians have proven that they have a formidable capacity for popular mobilization and resistance. However, resistance is neither produced nor played out in a vacuum. It is the product of a dialectic relationship that sees power producing its own vulnerabilities. In order to explain why grievances can be channelled into forceful and purposeful collective action, it is important to analyse its interaction with the surrounding mechanisms of control and how these create and structure opportunities for resistance. Scrutinising the way authoritarianism functions in the oPt provides a more fruitful line of enquiry into understanding why Palestinians, trapped between direct occupation and an oppressive authority, have failed to play a dramatic part in the Arab Spring. Three factors within this framework – the Israeli occupation, divisive intra-Palestinian politics with its significant dependence on coercive apparatuses of control, and the unaltered core tenets governing the dynamics of geopolitics in the region – will be the foci of analysis. They will be used to illuminate the structural/institutional impediments that have effectively crippled domestic space as a sphere in which alternative discourses could be promulgated and the means for the general population to challenge the dominance of or hold to account the elite group created by the new post-Oslo Palestinian political structures. This does not imply that resistance today in the oPt is defunct. There are many cases of “ordinary Palestinians committed to the cause of their own liberation” (Leech 2012:18) through activism in various civic forms all over the West Bank and in Gaza. This paper seeks to explain why despite this history of defiance, the oPt has not witnessed the same level of mass mobilisation experienced in surrounding states. In large part this failure is attributable to the structural impediments Palestinians now face. Grievances are ubiquitous, but rebellion has become more difficult. This paper seeks to offer a comprehensive explanation of the structural impediments that have undermined the chances of a “Palestinian Spring” among a population whose very identity has been shaped by a history of defiance. The Arab Spring has thus far failed to deliver the circumstances that could undermine these factors.