A Short Introduction To The Philately Of Palestine

The following table lists post offices in the occupied territories administered by the PNA from 1994 and the regular and special datestamps used.
Where an opening date (prior to 1994) is given it refers to offices without any long gap in service since then. Most of that particular information is based on the official list of post offices issued by the Ministry of Telecom & Information Technology. Some opening dates on the MTIT list refer only to offices (not agencies) and some data is not in line with other sources (eg. Wallach). In some instances I have made corrections. Further study is needed.
As there seems not to be any authoritative transliteration scheme for Arabic script, pretty much any source (including maps) I have consulted gives differing spellings for Palestinian place names.

Thomas Schubert, upon studying hundreds of covers, has developed a systematic classification of PNA datestamps. I have slightly amended Thomas' system and we now propose the following scheme. A large number of scans shown below are from Thomas' collection, complemented by scans from my own collection. Further images were obtained from the MTIT website (denoted by green borders, sometimes apparently not to scale) and websites like Ebay.

The classification ist still under consideration. Changes may be made where necessary.
New postmarks are constantly added. If you can contribute any information,
especially better scans (600dpi), please e-mail me!

Global suffixes Where only one or very few postmarks deviate in some respect from all other marks allocated to a group, a suffix is used to denote this fact. Example: The Bani Zaid mark shown below is part of group III d (no number and block letters). It is listed as III d R because the other postmarks all have serifed letters.	New Datebridge Some type III postmarks had their datebridge renewed or repaired recently. The new datebridges have some distinctly different cyphers:
R.   serifed ("roman") letters B.   block letters C.   curved bottom inscription S.   straight bottom inscription M.   mixed upper and lower case letters

I. Egyptian-style bridge datestamps, serifed letters with number without number	SZ I a	SZ I b
II. German datestamps latin number in top segment latin number in bottom segment latin and arabic number without number	SZ II a	SZ II b	SZ II c	SZ II d
III. Palestinian datestamps, round with large number, serifed letters with small number (latin only), block letters, curved with small numbers (latin and arabic), block letters without number, block letters without number, serifed letters, mixed case with number, serifed letters	SZ III a	SZ III b	SZ III b S	SZ III b RS
	SZ III c	SZ III d	SZ III d R	SZ III e
IV. Palestinian datestamps, oval -- with small number (latin only), block letters, curved -- without number	SZ III f	SZ IV d R		SZ IV b
V. Departmental datestamps VI. Special datestamps First Day Cover cancellations other special datestamps, cachets	SZ V	SZ VI a	SZ VI b

Places without a postal facilty