Stamps of the Holy Land
Palestine stamps holy land jerusalem

These pre-1948 stamps of the Holy Land from Palestine under the British Mandate show pictures of sacred sites in the Holy Land as well as “Palestine” written in British Mandate Palestine’s three official languages: English, Arabic, and Hebrew.

According to Israel Cohen, the Jewish and Arab members of the British Mandate’s stamp planning advisory council lobbied what would be written on the stamps. The Jewish members wanted the Hebrew script to write Eretz Yisrael; as a compromise, the High Commissioner decided the Hebrew transliteration of Palestine would be used, followed by the initials for Eretz Yisrael. Yehiel Limor and Ido Zelkovitz (2021) argue that, for British officials, the stamps were a means of increasing revenue, but for the Zionist Yishuv and Arab-Palestinians, they were a means of spreading nationalism.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/j.1469-8129.2010.00470.x [onlinelibrary.wiley.com]

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/799765 [muse.jhu.edu]

This small collection was purchased in the market in the old city of Jerusalem.

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