Palestine pound

The Palestine pound or Palestine lira (Arabic: جُنَيْه فِلَسْطَينِيّ [junayh filastini]; {{ [lira palestināy'it]; symbol: £P), was the currency of the British Mandate of Palestine from 1 November 1927 to 14 May 1948, and of the State of Israel between 15 May 1948 and 23 June 1952, until it was replaced with the Israeli pound.

The Palestine pound was also the currency of Transjordan until 1949 when it was replaced by the Jordanian dinar, and remained in usage in the West Bank of Jordan until 1950. In the Gaza Strip, the Palestine pound continued to circulate until April 1951, when it was replaced back with the Egyptian pound.

Until 1918, Palestine was an integral part of the Ottoman Empire and therefore used its currency, the Ottoman lira. During 1917 and 1918, Palestine was occupied by the British army, who set up a military administration. The official currency was the Egyptian pound, which had been first introduced into Egypt in 1834, but several other currencies were legal tender at fixed exchange rates that were vigorously enforced. After the establishment of a civil administration in 1921, the High Commissioner Herbert Samuel ordered that from 22 January 1921 only Egyptian currency and the British gold sovereign would be legal tender.

In 1926, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies appointed a Palestine Currency Board to introduce a local currency. It was based in London and chaired by Percy G. Ezechiel, with a Currency Officer resident in Palestine. The board decided that the new currency would be called the Palestine pound, 1:1 with sterling and divided into 1,000 mils. The £P1 gold coin would contain 123.27447 grains of standard gold. The enabling legislation was the Palestine Currency Order, 1927, signed by the King in February 1927. The Palestine pound became legal tender on 1 November 1927. The Egyptian pound (at the fixed rate of £P1 = £E0.975) and the British gold sovereign remained legal tender until 1 March 1928.

The Palestine Currency Order explicitly excluded Transjordan from its application, but the Government of Transjordan decided to adopt the Palestine pound at the same time as Palestine did. The Egyptian pound remained legal tender in Transjordan until 1930.

All the denominations were trilingual in Arabic, English and Hebrew.

It so happened that the new Palestinian currency was released, which was a great ordeal. The Palestinian currency which was coined especially for Palestine, and issued both in banknotes and coins, had the phrase “the land of Israel” written on it in Hebrew. Despite this hint, we accepted it, and the Arabs of Palestine dealt in it in what was almost an acknowledgment that Palestine was the land of Israel.

— Wasif Jawhariyyeh, The Storyteller of Jerusalem, page 698