Transportation to the city from the Jewish area was limited to the only road in existence, and that road was under constant attack. Supplies were in short supply.
The British had enough problems. They had had enough. It was just three short years after the end of World War II; India had their independence and they were already out of there and the Palestine mandate was drawing to an end, so why would they want to get involved and help Jews; despite their requirement under the mandate.
The British had announced that they were closing down their postal services in Jerusalem as of May 5th. However on April 20th, Arabs ambushed a huge 350-strong vehicle convoy on its way to Jerusalem. Many soldiers and passengers were killed. What was the British answer? To close the postal services! As of April 25th there were no more postal services to and from Jerusalem.
Now from other posts in this blog we know that the Jewish community created their own postal system. Read here. This was supposed to take effect as of May 2nd. Houston we have a problem, there is no way to get the stamps to Jerusalem, the roads are closed!
There was heavy fighting between Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem and it wasn't exactly safe to get to a post office anyway. May 8th the Jewish forces seemed to overcome the Arab forces in the Jerusalem area and a semblance of peace evolved. So what do we do now? Let's call our family and let them know. Problem is that this is 1948 and there were very few phone lines and the only method was writing.
Now there is a new problem, they had no stamps as supplies were not coming through. There were also no JNF stamps on hand to use and overprint. So what were they to do?
You know the Partition Plan JNF labels? Well the printer of those stamps, Haoman Press, still had the printing plates. Problem solved, let us add the word Postage and the face value of the stamp. OK then, they decided to issue three values, a 5mil for the printed letter rate, a 10mil for the regular rate and 25 mil for registered.
So Haoman Press printed the stamps and to speed up the process, they had Lipshitz Press add the overprint. This went on sale on May 9th. Amazing, from idea to store within 24 hours! Looks like they really wanted to send mail.
There were long queues of people who wanted to buy these stamps, many of them as souvenirs, and supplies ran out within a few hours. But as it turns out, Haomnan was still printing sheets, but this time they were adding the overprints themselves, in the same process. However they added the overprints in a different way. In the first issue, the word Postage was added at the top and in this issue, they were added at the bottom. This issue was put on sale on May 10th. Collectors know these as First Issue and Second Issue, I wonder why.
May 14th Israeli statehood was declared and on May 16th the Doar Ivri stamps went on sale, except in Jerusalem. A war? A siege? Both.
Pressure was on to open the main post office in Jerusalem and because they were running out of the 5mil stamp, they ordered a reprint. The post office was opened on May 21st and the new overprints were delivered on May 24th. Problem was that the 5 of the 5mils was slightly different. So what name do we give this issue? Third Issue, right? Actually the also became known as Jerusalem Locals I, II and III to differentiate them from the Palestine Mandate overprints.
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The history of Jerusalem is always exciting, but the study of stamps in the framework of the struggle makes it more enjoyable.
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