Introduction

Will skip through the history rapidly, as this is all very well-known. Relations between Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine, never good, deteriorated further after WWII. By 1947 the area was in a state of civil war, escalating into an international war in 1948 when Israel was established and several Arab states (Iraq among them) invaded Israel. A vast number of Palestinian Arabs had been driven from their homes during all this, and they ended up living, often in fairly desperate conditions, as refugees in neighbouring countries. Naturally, their plight aroused considerable sympathy among fellow Arabs.

We see a few countries in this period attempting to raise funds for the Palestinians through the use of obligatory tax stamps. Jordan authorised tax stamps as early as August 1946.¹ The actual purpose of these stamps –whether, in broad terms, they were intended to fund relief efforts for Palestinians in Iraq, or the relief or belligerent efforts of the Palestinians in Israel– I do not know.

Organisation

This is fairly awkward, as can be seen. The Gibbons catalogue, which I use for my collection, divides these stamps into lettered groups, A to G, based on the style and text of the overprint. This is helpful for trying to match particular stamps one acquires to catalogue numbers, but it rather obscures the chronology of the series as a whole. For this page I have kept the Gibbons group system, but have re-arranged the order in which the groups appear. This hopefully makes the development of the series somewhat clearer, although we still have, for example, Group F, which spans almost a year. The alternative would be to simply dispense with the groups completely, and go solely off the issue dates, but that’s a bit too audacious for me. So we have this hopefully adequate compromise.

As can be seen, the initial stamps were revenue stamps overprinted just “Save Palestine”² – the value of the revenue stamp was maintained for the stamp’s new function. The remainder of the series is split between stamps overprinted in this manner, and stamps where the overprint includes a value in fils different from the underlying stamp. Some of the underlying stamps are revenues, others postage, others service – I assume this depended simply on whatever stocks were to hand, and capable of being diverted from their normal functions, at the time.

Note that the Group A overprint uses the word “fils” in the plural – the actual figure 2 doesn’t appear as the plural use implies it.³ This had confused me.

Use of the stamps (postal)

Initially, use of these stamps was voluntary. From 17 January 1949 onwards⁴ they were compulsory on all mail – 2 fils for internal letters and 5 fils for external ones.⁵ From a very rough eyeball survey of Ebay, there seems to have been an approximate 50-50 split between payments of 5 fils and 10 fils on external mail during the voluntary era, where any payment at all was made. It appears that one could pay more than the required minimum during the compulsory era, although this does not seem to have been commonly done. The highest extra payment I have seen is 5 fils on an external letter (so, 10 fils total).⁶ They were supposed to be applied on the reverses of covers, and the Director-General of Posts and Telegraphs published a postal notice chiding the public for putting them on the front.⁷

The last day the stamps were compulsory was 16 January 1951,⁸ in line with the implementing statute which provided for a two-year period.⁹ Possibly they could still be used voluntarily for a time afterwards – according to my notes I once saw a February 1951 external cover with a 5 fils tax stamp, though I foolishly neglected to save a picture.

Goverment departments, foreign diplomatic personnel and the British armed forces were not required to apply the stamps.¹⁰

Use of the stamps (non-postal) It should be kept in mind that correspondence was only one of the areas where the Palestine relief tax was levied. Overprinted stamps were issued with values all the way up to 1 dinar, and these were attached to documents and other items liable for the tax. Gibbons only lists the stamps applied to covers, but Ross & Powell has a full listing.

Some confusing points

There seems to be some disagreement as to when these stamps appeared. Buscke’s article contains a table of earliest known uses for each value¹¹ – these are almost invariably later than the issue dates given by Gibbons. Now, the issue date and the date of earliest known use need not be the same thing, but in some cases the discrepancy between the two is very significant – for example, SG 325 is dated 17 January 1949 in Gibbons but as late as 7 September 1949 by Buscke. Beyond noting this I make no comment.

Gibbons lists two Group F stamps which it numbers T333 and T334. These stamps aren’t listed in Scott or Michel, and Gibbons only prices them unused. I assume what has happened here is: these stamps were never used to pay the tax on letters, although, being denominated 5 and 10 fils, they were of suitable value for doing so – cf. the couple of other 10 fils tax stamps which were issued and used postally even though it was never a compulsory fee. Thus Gibbons lists them, even though there’s no evidence they ever were used postally. I take the point, but I’ve removed these two stamps from the gallery above – I’d rather do that than have two permanent blank spaces.

The 10 fils orange stamp with the baby portrait is only listed by Gibbons with a “wider overprint” (Gibbons T332). The one pictured here clearly has a “narrower overprint” like Group F. I put this with the “wider overprint” stamps nonetheless, for a quiet life.

1. https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/78189. The stamps weren’t actually issued until 1947. SG T264-275.
2. Buscke translates this as “Palestine Relief”, which is a much more natural rendering, but I’m too accustomed to Gibbons’ “Save Palestine” to use anything else.
3. Bernd-Dieter Buscke, The Postage Tax Stamps of Iraq for Palestine Relief 1948-49, 4.
4. Ross & Powell (32) say 27 January. I think this must be incorrect. Gibbons gives 17 January as the issue date for most of the stamps, and the statute implementing these stamps had an effective date of 17 January.
5. Buscke, 2-3.
6. Pictured in Buscke, 5. See also the 2.II.1949 cover for one from the author's collection.
7. The Iraq Times issue of 15 April 1949.
8. Ross & Powell, 32.
9. Law of the Stamp Fee for Palestine Relief for Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Transactions No. (5) of 1949, Art. 5.
10. Ibid, Art. 2.
11. Buscke, 8.