50 Palestine Pounds Provisional Issue

The Anglo-Palestine Bank's 50 Pounds provisional issue of 1948 is one of the more historically charged pieces in twentieth-century Levantine paper money. When the British Mandate collapsed and the State of Israel declared independence in May 1948, there was no central bank and no sovereign currency ready to deploy. The Anglo-Palestine Bank — a commercial institution — was pressed into emergency service as a quasi-central monetary authority, issuing these notes as a stop-gap before the Bank of Israel and the Israeli pound could be formally established.

The high denomination made this note rare in ordinary hands. At 50 Pounds, it was not a note the average resident would handle, and surviving circulated examples are genuinely uncommon.