Palestine Police Force - photo 1
Palestine Police Force - photo 2

Palestine Police Force

Starting price
£ 1 500
Auction dateClassic
28.04.2021 11:00UTC +01:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 519398
Lot 107 | Palestine Police Force
Palestine Police Force
Reward Poster. Jerusalem: 10 January 1945.
Rare poster seeking information leading to the arrest of one of the commandos involved in Operation Atlas. Hassan Salameh (also known as Hasan Salama), was born in the village of Qula in 1913, and participated in a number of violent demonstrations and incidents against both the British Mandatory authorities and the Yishuv during the 1930s. In the Arab Rebellion (1936-1939) he became a local area commander, but when this collapsed, Salameh fled via Beirut and Damascus to Baghdad, together with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and other Arab High Committee members. Later, he escaped to Nazi Germany with Grand Mufti al-Husseini, and undertook military training. On 6 October 1944, Salameh and four other commandos parachuted into Mandatory Palestine as part of Operation Atlas. The operation – directed at supplying Palestinian Arab resistance groups and co-ordinating various sabotage operations – was severely compromised from the start by British Military Intelligence gaining valuable information on German activities in the area, the refusal of local Arabs to participate in the operation, and by Salameh himself suffering a foot injury in the parachute drop. Salameh therefore went to ground, and, despite a large manhunt, managed to evade detection. The present lot shows that the British authorities were still seeking him 3 months after his aerial entry into Palestine. After the Second World War, Salameh became a commander in the Army of the Holy War, a group of Palestinian irregulars following Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni (1907-1948), and was injured in the battle of Ra's al-‘Ayn during the Arab-Israeli War, dying on 2 June 1948.

Reward poster (432 x 310mm) with text in English and Arabic (light vertical and horizontal creasefolds, a few minor marginal nicks and light creases, stamps of C.I.D. Gaza District on verso dated 20 January 1945).
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
8 King Street, St. James's
SW1Y 6QT London
United Kingdom
Preview
14.04.2021 – 28.04.2021
Phone +44 (0)20 7839 9060
Email
4FQ.AYGKAGLUQ@FO3G@
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