Sending mail to forbidden countries

So I am browsing the net, looking for a certain item and I find it. I go through the purchase process and get to shipping and find, what? That Israel is one of the few countries that they don’t ship to. Why is that? Could it be for ideological reasons or could it be that Israeli post has a bad reputation? Doesn’t make a difference, they don’t ship to Israel, yet it is an item I want, be it a cover or an item of clothing. So?

Well today there are services in place, via a third party. You pay for a service which provides you a post box number in, say America, and have them ship there. That same service then collects your parcel from that postbox and forwards it to you for an exorbitant fee and you are happy.

What has that good to do with philately? Good question, thank you for asking. In 1967 Israel took over control of what is known as the West Bank and Gaza and I am intentionally leaving politics out of it here. However, all of a sudden, we have a few millions new inhabitants who are closed off from their family. They can’t use email as it hasn’t been invented yet and they can’t send letters as no postal relations exist between Israel and many of those countries, many who are still in a state of war with Israel.

So what can they do? The answer my friend is not blowing in the wind, it is in the first paragraph. A third part!

The first obvious system was the Red Cross. With the Red Cross you could send a message to anyone via the Red Cross, however these were brief messages and anyone can read them. If you don’t like what is written there, somehow it will not be delivered.

Along comes a bright spark and says, let us send mail via the London Post Master and they did. How did it work? A letter was sent from Israel to the Post Master of King Edwards Street in London. Enclosed in that letter was another letter intended for a third country, say Iraq, and an International Reply Coupon. This coupon was intended for use by the London Post Master to pay for the service. One advantage was that the chances of the mail being read was minimal and you could write whatever you want and how much you want. Actually there was a second address in London and an address in Cyprus.

Ingenious, right? Well it was modelled after the famous World War 2 Thomas Cook service in which someone from Nazi occupied areas could send mail to family or friends living in Great Britain or Palestine, for that matter, to an undercover address of POB 506, Lisbon, Portugal. The Thomas Cook office in Lisbon would then forward the mail to Great Britain or other countries.

From Qatar to London and thanking them for the service

 
In the hopes for peace, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan decided upon an Open Bridges policy, so that people could cross from Jordan to Israel, hopefully for trade or to visit or whatever. Now we have an open bridge and people crossing and what did they do? Well some people took letters for others. They folded them in their pockets and in essence were supposed to go to the Allenby Bridge Post Office, buy stamps and post them, but many didn’t. They were scared of being caught and just shoved the letters in the post box without stamps. Of course the recipient was then forced to pay the postage cost, but also the fine. This method was better than the London idea because it was much quicker.

So we now have a border crossing and people who want to visit, but what is missing? Tourism! After all some of the holiest Christian sites are in what is known as the West Bank. So some tourist companies jumped on the band wagon and purchased Israeli stamps. “If you don’t know anyone crossing the border, send it to us, we will send it”. They obviously charged a nice fee because why do it for nothing. You can see that the fee was paid either by the application of a label or the company’s special cancel.

Label of the Amman Halabi Touring Company. Folded as they probably didn't have stamps yet

  
This practice is sometimes known as undercover mail.

Some of these are in use today. There are people in cities such as Jaffa who buy items locally and send them to countries with no relations or that they don’t want to actively buy from us.

I have outlined some of the methods that our Arab brothers communicate with others, maybe next time I will write about methods that Jews in Arab countries, those that are still left, communicate with Israel.

For more information see "Mail Contacts Between Israel and Arab Countries - a Summary" by Lawrence Fisher, H.L.P.H. Journal VI #109-110, pages 333-353, 2008.