1 Israel Pound

Bank Leumi Le-Israel B.M. — "National Bank of Israel Ltd." — was a commercial bank, not a central authority, yet it held the legal concession to issue currency in the early state years before the Bank of Israel was established in 1954. This note belongs to that transitional window, when the newly independent state had not yet built a central bank of its own and relied on an institution with roots in the Anglo-Palestine Bank of 1902.

The American Bank Note Company contract placed production in New York, a common arrangement for newly independent nations lacking domestic printing infrastructure. The series was retired when the Bank of Israel Act came into force and Leumi's note-issuing authority was formally extinguished.