During the Mandate period, municipal councils had limited authority. Yet, they were a sphere of dispute over national and local sovereignty from the Mandate’s early days in Palestine. This paper explores the contestation over the Nazareth municipal council in 1946. Despite the limitations of the municipal elections process and the limited voting rights, residents of Nazareth were highly involved in the political process, actively participated in the build up to and campaigning for the elections, and engaged in the contest over the results, waged through bureaucratic, legal and informal channels. Having lost the elections, the ‘United Front,’ one of the two elections blocks vying for municipal leadership, contested the results, first appealing to the District Commissioner and later to the court. These appeals relied on Mandate regulations and bureaucratic arguments, including inadequacies in ballot paper and in irregularities in the voting and counting processes, in addition to allegations of undue influence on voters by the certain candidates. At the same time, the appeals advanced claims for rights and affirmed their dedication to the public good in the city of Nazareth. Simultaneously, these appeals included arguments based on religious and familial ties as a communal base of identification. However, going beyond the formal appeals to the Mandate government, the disputing parties turned to the Arab Higher Committee (the organization of the Palestinian national leadership in Palestine during the Mandate) for arbitration while asserting commitment to the general good and the need for unity among the Arabs in the difficult situation of the country towards the end of the Mandate period and under the uncertainty of national struggle. Exploring the discourses and practices of Nazareth residents in their contact with the colonial state and the national leadership, this paper highlights Palestinians’ claims for citizenship and their identifications: local, communal and national. This paper draws on an array of sources, including state archives, MAKI archives, and Arabic newspapers of the period .