When is a label not a label?

I promised Graham Beck that I would provide more information about labels being used as regular postage.

It is no secret that in 1920, Great Britain was given the Mandate to govern an area that the League of Nations called Palestine. This area became known as the British Mandate for Palestine. The specific instructions by the League of Nations was for the British to prepare the territory for future Jewish Statehood. I am not going to go into the politics here as some will agree and others will not, so I will stick to the interesting side, the philatelic side.

After the end of WWII, the British, having had enough of wars, India and their Palestine Mandate, informed the United Nations that they were terminating their mandate as of 15th May 1948. Everyone knew that the Jews were going to declare statehood. Here starts our story of the day.

British Mandate for Palestine, the official body in charge of the postal system, requested that the U.N. accept all responsibility for the continuation of mail services, both inland and abroad. But they apparently received no answer.

Instead of arranging a gradual orderly take over of the postal services by the new Jewish State, the Postmaster General decided to notify everyone of their suspension of all postal services, and the closing down of all post offices between 15th April and 5th May. They notified the UPU that the British Mandate Administration would no longer be responsible for parcels arriving after March 15, and surface mail arriving after April 15, 1948. 

When there is a void, someone steps in. The Jewish community of Palestine, known as the Yishuv, sent an invitation to thirteen Yishuv leaders for an April 18 meeting and to form a body for the purpose of administering the interests of the future Jewish State. They proposed to call this body the Minhelet Ha’am, People’s Administration.

The Minhelet Ha’am took it upon themselves to step in when the British Mandate postal services were discontinued. They agreed to adopt an emergency measure and authorized the use of Jewish National Fund (JNF or Keren Kayemet L’Ysrael) labels, to be validated for postal use by over printing them with the Hebrew word “DOAR” (post) and to be cancelled with a new all-Hebrew canceller, or basically a Minhelet Ha’am postmark.

What is the JNF you ask? Good question. The JNF was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine and later the British Mandate for Palestine for Jewish settlement. It was a national land purchasing fund that anyone could donate money to help the purchase and development of land. The JNF also issued labels to show their aims. The first stamp, the Zion Stamp, was issued in Vienna in 1902. It depicted a blue Star of David on a white background. At the heart of the Star of David, was the word "Zion". Often their labels looked like postage stamps, including face values.

Back to our story. The JNF labels were validated for postal use by one of the Doar markings which basically turned them into postage stamps. There are three distinct types of postal cancels: Tel Aviv, Haifa and Kiryat Motzkin.

These became known as the Interim issues and were first placed on sale on May 2, 1948 and remained on sale until May 14, 1948. The State of Israel was declared late afternoon on the May 14th and May 15th was a Saturday and there were no postal services. The legitimate use of the labels was supposed end on May 23rd, but as there was a war going on, some leeway was given. The Mandate's postal rates remained unchanged during this period.

JNF stamp without overprint	JNF stamp with Haifa overprint	JNF stamp with Tel Aviv overprint

Note: Not only JNF labels were used.

As the overprints on the JNF labels were made by students and older people with small rubber stamps, many varieties exist and they don't add to the value of the stamp. The ink used was mostly black in Haifa, and purple and red in Tel-Aviv.

British Mandate stamps were still valid at this time and covers can be found with a mixture of Mandate and Minhelet Ha'am stamps or even Minhelet Ha'am stamps and Israeli Doar Ivri stamps and even a mixture of stamps and cancellers.

The interim period, with the use of labels as postage and different cancellers makes up a very interesting period. There is the special case of Jerusalem, maybe I will discuss this next.

Registered letter from Tiberias, 7th May 1948,10 mills letter rate + 15 mills registry fee.

References: "The Interim Period Postage Stamps of Israel MARCH TO JULY 1948. Bruno Forsher