Petach Tikva 1886 or, Arabs Refuse to Acknowledge the Law

From an academic article (anti-Zionist by the way):

There was a dispute over grazing rights between the peasants of Yahudiyya and the settlers of Petah Tikva, who either did not know or did not care that it was customary in Palestine for herds to graze on fields after they were harvested, regardless of formal ownership. This dispute escalated into an argument over settlers’ access to their fields. The peasants plowed up a road to prevent settlers’ access to their more distant fields. 

On 28 March 1886 asettler rode his horse on the road. Consequently, peasants stole the horse. Settlers retaliated by expropriating ten mules from Yahudiyya. The next day villagers of Yahudiyya attacked Petah Tikva, wounding five settlers, one of whom subsequently died, and seized all the settlers’ livestock. The kaymakam of Jaffa dispatched soldiers who arrested thirty-one peasants.

Mandel, Shafir, and Khalidi agree that the underlying cause of the dispute was ownership and use of the land.

Peasants of Umm Labis and Yahudiyya had lost their lands to two Orthodox Christian moneylenders in Jaffa after defaulting on loans. The moneylenders retained the villagers as tenants. Subsequently, local authorities seized the lands because the villagers failed to pay their taxes. Those lands were then sold to the settlers of Petah Tikva. At first the settlers could not work all the 14,200 dunams they purchased and rented some back to the peasants. But in 1884, after reestablishing Petah Tikva, the settlers occupied more of the land, disre-garding in the process the local norm that someone who prepared land to plant a summer crop thereby acquired the right to plant a (normally more lucrative) winter crop. The peasants belatedly realized that they had not only lost title but also usufruct of the land.

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