In the Israeli Negev desert, home demolition of unauthorized Arab-Bedouin villages is a contested issue, enacting multiple and contradictory realities. The tents and shacks of el-Shams, for instance, have been demolished almost ten times in one year by the Israeli police, but each time they have been reconstructed with the help of human rights activists. Surprisingly and in contrast to nearly all circulating discourses, nobody ever lived in the demolished buildings-what at one level becomes a

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... e level becomes a humanitarian catastrophe, at another becomes a "ghost village". Drawing on recent reflections on global ethnography, this article seeks to follow "zones of friction" and connections among people, money, discourses, and emotions that developed around this specific case: relations that range from solidarity activities to the discursive practices of journalists and dislocated officials of international organizations. On a more abstract level, the emerging contradictions between these levels reveal the implications of an uncritically reproduced idea of "local community". I argue that by following such connections, we gain important insights how transnational power relations are shaping multiple realities around a political conflict. Introduzione "Sono molti gli uomini che erigono mura, ma pochi quelli che costruiscono ponti". Anche se questo detto può sembrare soltanto un luogo comune, non è necessariamente vero il contrario: "sono molti gli uomini che costruiscono ponti e pochi quelli che erigono mura". Questo articolo intende porre invece l'enfasi su una verità più complessa e forse più scomoda: non è sempre evidente che cosa sia un "ponte" e cosa siano delle "mura". Attraverso il caso di una campagna per i diritti dei cittadini arabo