The internet has been transformative for grassroots politics in the Middle East long before the revolutionary epoch of January 2011. The internet appeared on the scene with the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 and the regional impact of ‘9/11’. In Palestine the internet reconfigures political expressions and inspires new forms of struggles. While doing so it (unintentionally) recalls unresolved national liberation struggles. But how online political resistance corresponds to offline material practices is understudied, as if the technologies are more interesting than the reasons that people use them. Rather than adding to a growing literature about internet politics I wish to contribute ethnographic flesh from fieldwork in Palestine and Lebanon to the theoretical and journalistic frameworks. I will reflect on the implications of the internet in everyday life and in contexts of war. This means taking the arguments of the activists themselves as a starting point. Consequently this paper challenges the implicit Cartesian divide and goes beyond mainstream online/offline and virtual/material divisions. Revolutions challenging imperialism or dictatorships do not lend themselves to ‘weak tie’ online engagement such as ‘liking’ or ‘sharing’ a Facebook cause. It appeared that precisely because the stakes are very high, and a matter of life and death, a unique revolutionary role ascribed to the internet has no resonance 'in the field'. Furthermore, the research shows that an over-emphasis on the internet as a tactical tool can even be risky. In the case of Palestine, for example, internet usage paradoxically brings activists even closer to the panoptic gaze of the occupying powers; and increasingly to that of the proxy authority (the PNA) of the very nation that activists aim to liberate. This results in double surveillance that strongly challenges liberationist internet discourse and the role of the internet as a necessary basic tool of subversion. But even where the success of political movements online is apparent, research shows that this would not have been possible without successful on-the-ground practices. For instance, Hamas and Hezbollah’s growing popularity is represented by their popularity in online networks, not the other way around. This paper proposes to understand the internet as inherently inhabiting a double power. This dual character subsequently results in a dual dialectics of the internet as a blessing and a curse which I shall demonstrate through an analyses of several grassroots Palestinian campaigns that are embedded in online and offline spheres.