Postage Stamps and Postal History of Palestine - Transitional and Local Postal Services (1948) - Minhelet Ha'am

In early May 1948, the Jewish provisional government, known as Minhelet Ha'am, did not have its own postage stamps ready, so it used existing labels, both JNF labels, which otherwise have been printed since 1902 for fundraising purposes, and local community tax stamps. The JNF labels were given a Hebrew overprint meaning postage (doar), (as shown in the picture), whereas local community tax stamps were not given overprints. The JNF stamps were printed from May 3 to 14, 1948, their sale ended on May 14, 1948, with remaining stocks ordered to be returned and destroyed. Use of these stamps was tolerated until May 22, 1948. The Mandate's postal rates remained unchanged during this period.

Since Jerusalem was under siege, its residents continued to use JNF stamps until June 20, 1948, whereupon Israeli stamps reached the city. These stamps, overprinted with a JNF seal, bore a map of the UN Partition Plan.

Minhelet Ha'am used 31 different JNF labels. Owing to different denomination and overprints, there are at least 104 variants catalogued. Eight of the stamps feature Jewish Special operations paratroopers killed during WWII, including Abba Berdichev, Hannah Szenes, and Haviva Reik, Enzo Sereni. The JNF also honored kibbutzim Hanita and Tirat Zvi, the Jewish Brigade, the Technion, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, an illegal immigrant ship, and Zionists Yehoshua Hankin, Chaim Weizmann, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, and, pictured here, Theodore Herzl with Chaim Nachman Bialik.