We recently spoke about the Israeli interim period in which the British had not yet left, but were still playing games with us and one of those games was interefering with the transfer of mail. I wrote two posts about this, one "When a label is not a label" and the other "Whiskey Mail". Here comes another in this fascinating period in our postal history.

The story is about a city called Rishon Lezion. I would not want to live there but I am in the minority because it is among the largest cities in the Israel currently one about a quarter of a million inhabitants. I know that is small by most countries standards but we are a small country, about the size of New Jersey in the USA. For us Rishon as it is known, is so large that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish its border and the neighboring town known as Holon.

But Rishon Lezion was not always so big. In 1882 about 10 pioneers together purchased about four acres of land to establish the city. The city grew, of course, and other cities were established around it, such as Tel Aviv, Holon, and a city called Nahalat Yehuda, north of Rishon, which today is part of Rishon Lezion itself. However in 1948, Rishon Lezion had about 12,000 inhabitants, 5% of its size today. In those days between Rishon Lezion and Tel Aviv there were orange groves, sand dunes and two hostile Arab villages, Beit Dajan and Yazor.

Remember the post about Safed and the problems it experienced in 1948? The Whiskey mail post? Not only Safed suffered, there were battles all over the country and of course the British, like today, did nothing to protect the Jewish inhabitants. The Arabs from the villages around Rishon Lezion began attacking Jewish vehicles traveling between Rishon and Tel Aviv. Shots, stones and ambushes were daily occurrences and as you can imagine it was exactly a pleasant time.

Some citizens took an initiative and made home-made armored vehicles. Basically they took a bus and added steel to it, and the buses accompanied the cars that were on the road. Until in one ambush seven people were killed near Yazur and all traffic to Tel Aviv was stopped

Like today, Tel Aviv at that time was the center of business (not our capital), trade, post office, supplies, etc. and people had to get there and back. They had to find a way to get there and they did. They found a way that passed through fields, dirt roads to Holon and from there to Tel Aviv. Instead of 20 minutes to get to Tel Aviv, it just took about two hours. Something I learned from spy movies, is that a route must be changed so that no one could study and ambush them. So the drivers did that, especially taxi drivers, every day they found a different way between the fields, the main thing that the belligerent Arab units would not learn the route.

Contact with Tel Aviv was also problematic. There were no phones to speak of and the official mail services of the Mandate were not regular, only once or twice a week, and people need to be in contact.

Here's a thought. If there are cars making trips back and forth, why can they not take and fetch mail? So the local council convened and decided to set up its own postal services. Of course it was not legal because there was supposedly still the Mandatory Postal Service, so as always happens, they decided to set up a committee to deal with the issue and make sure that the committee had no connection to the local council, wink wink.

The committee convened and decided on the design of a stamp for the service, a stamp showing the armored vehicle that was in service from Rishon LeZion to Tel Aviv. Since this was a local postal service of Rishon LeZion, the service started in only one direction, from Rishon. 

What is amazing here, is that from the moment of approval, stamp design, stamp printing until the moment the first letters came out, only eight days passed. All this in an emergency when surrounded by hostile villages. Which committee would have been successful today where most committees decide not to decide, especially if it is the UN.

The service operated similarly to a courier service. Someone who needed to post a letter would buy stamps at high prices (someone had to finance the service) and bring the stamped letter to a specific restaurant in Rishon Lezion. A courier would collect the letters at eight in the morning and travel to Tel Aviv with an armored taxi. In Tel Aviv, he would take the stamped letters to recipients and return home.

As soon as people saw that the service was successful, neighboring Nahalat Yehuda also joined the service. Of course Tel Aviv merchants also joined in and the same courier would collect the mail from an agreed collection point in Tel Aviv and would return with the mail.

The service operated for about a month and was stopped on May 6th when the postal services of the People's Administration went into operation.

Of course collectors and stamp dealers liked the service and saw potential and they also sent letters as curiosities, but that is life.

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