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This article discusses the spatial and political dimensions of an unrecognized Arab village in Israel, which is a subject of houses demolition during the last decade, taking part in parallel to a legal struggle for recognition. This case is part of a wide political act in Israel, where Palestinians are rendered 'criminal' and their spaces illegitimate. We will suggest that the unrecognized villages cannot be seen solely as a product of planning policies, but are essential to the understanding of the ways in which Israeli sovereignty is embodied. We will discuss the case using legal documents regarding the latest petition made to the High Court of Justice. Through those documents, we will try to analyse the ways in which Israeli sovereignty is being embodied using theoretical tools by Carl Schmitt and his debate with Hans Kelsen. At the conclusions, we will suggest some thoughts regarding the possibilities of resistance.

Throughout history, cities have been the theatre of social and spatial struggles. The issue of urban protests, however, has not yet been investigated in detail in the light of the growing concern of the need to rethink urban studies, from theoretical and epistemic assumptions, to methodological issues. It is argued that the mobilisation of urban dissent in the so-called Arab Spring offers a good opportunity to develop a critical approach based on the observation of the nexus between an event (a punctual expression of dissent) and a site (the urban environment in which the former takes place). The goal is to avoid theoretical rigidities inherent to the assumptions about the intrinsic qualities of cities or social movements. The paper also aims at connecting different academic and disciplinary traditions across linguistic divides—and especially the Anglophone urban studies with the Francophone stream of city-focused political science and political sociology.