The paper is a part of a larger project that seeks to present a social and political micro-history of Nazareth from 1940 to 1966. By tracing local politics and identity formation in this Arab urban center, I explore Palestinians’ bids for citizenship in both the British colonial state and the Israeli state. The municipality of Nazareth constituted an important point of contact and contestation between the state and the residents of the city. Hence, it offers a rich arena of exploration of the interaction between political and economic realities, state control mechanisms and local reactions. In this paper, I explore this interaction through one episode, a strike of the municipal sanitation workers. In October 1952, the “Conference of Arab Workers in Israel,” a trade union connected to the Israeli Communist Party, and after prolonged negotiations with the municipality, called for a strike by Nazareth municipal workers represented by the union. They demanded that workers rights and salaries be made equal to those of Jewish municipality employees throughout Israel. The strike faced various responses amongst the residents of the city who while sympathetic to the workers, suffered from diminished life quality due to lack of sanitation services. The strike resulted in confrontations between strikers and strikebreakers, which eventually led to the arrest of several activists, including the secretary of the Conference. It also resulted in an elaborate distribution of leaflets in Nazareth by both supporters and opponents of the strike. Both parties argued their interest was in the general good of Nazareth and accused the other of having ulterior motives resulting from connections to the military government (by the supporters of the strike) or to the Israeli Communist Party (by opponents ). Both employed the language of democracy, citizenship and communal good. Elaborating on this case allows exploring questions of local politics, class relations and the role the state played in this seemingly local issue. In addition, examining a strike held in 1952, only four years after the establishment of the state of Israel, can shed light on the ways Palestinian citizens were incorporated into the state and the ways in which they responded to their new position. This paper draws on an array of sources, including state archives (Israeli State Archive and IDF Archives), Arabic newspapers of the period (al-Ittihad, the Communist Party newspaper and al-Yawm, the official Arabic language daily, affiliated with the ruling MAPAI party) and interviews.