The Palestinian Flag: Colors, Meaning and History

The Palestinian flag is three horizontal stripes of black, white and green with a red triangle at the hoist. It belongs to the family of pan-Arab flags that came out of the Arab Revolt of 1916, it was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, and it has flown at the United Nations since 2015. This guide explains what each color means, where the design came from, whether Gaza has a separate flag, how to type the flag emoji, and why the flags of Jordan, Sudan and Western Sahara look so similar.

What the Palestinian flag looks like

The flag has three equal horizontal bands: black on top, white in the middle and green at the bottom. A red isosceles triangle sits on the hoist side, its point reaching about a third of the way across the flag. The usual proportions are 1:2, so the flag is twice as wide as it is tall. There is no emblem, star or text, which is one reason it is easy to draw, paint on a wall or reproduce in a slice of watermelon.

Soldiers of the Sharifian Army carrying the flag of the Arab Revolt in southern Yanbu. The Palestinian flag keeps the same four colors.

What the colors of the Palestinian flag mean

Black, white, green and red are the pan-Arab colors. The explanation most often given ties each color to a period of Arab history: black for the Abbasid caliphate, white for the Umayyads, green for the Fatimids, and red for the Hashemite dynasty that led the Arab Revolt. A medieval verse by the poet Safi al-Din al-Hilli is usually quoted alongside this: white for deeds, black for battles, green for fields, red for swords. These are the traditional readings rather than an official definition, and you will see them repeated across the Arab world for every flag that uses the same four colors.

For Palestinians the colors carry a second layer of meaning that has nothing to do with caliphates. The flag was restricted for decades, so displaying its colors became an act in itself. That is why the colors turn up on everything from embroidery to the watermelon, and why a shirt or hoodie in black, white, green and red reads instantly as Palestinian.

• Black: the top stripe; traditionally the Abbasids, in modern readings the hardship of the past.
• White: the middle stripe; the Umayyads, and peace.
• Green: the bottom stripe; the Fatimids, and the land.
• Red: the triangle; the Hashemites and the Arab Revolt, and the struggle for freedom.

Where the Palestinian flag came from

The design descends from the flag of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire, introduced during the Arab Revolt of 1916 to 1918 led by Sharif Hussein of Mecca. That flag used the same four colors with the red triangle at the hoist, and it became the template for the flags of several Arab states formed in the following decades. In Palestine the colors appeared on nationalist flags during the British Mandate years of the 1920s and 1930s, with the stripe order changing more than once.

The flag in its current form was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. On 15 November 1988, when the Palestinian National Council declared independence in Algiers, it named this flag as the flag of the State of Palestine. In September 2015 the United Nations General Assembly voted to allow the flags of non-member observer states to be raised at UN headquarters, and the Palestinian flag was raised in New York on 30 September 2015.

Between 1967 and the Oslo Accords of 1993, Israeli military orders restricted displaying the flag in the occupied territories, and people were arrested for raising it or painting its colors. That history is why the flag means more to Palestinians than a national emblem usually does, and why artists reached for stand-ins such as the watermelon.

Is there a separate Gaza flag?

No. Gaza is part of the Palestinian territories and flies the Palestinian flag. "Gaza flag" is one of the most common searches during news events, and it almost always means the same black, white, green and red flag described here. Political movements in Gaza have their own banners, but there is no distinct territorial flag for the Gaza Strip, and the colors people associate with Gaza are the colors of the Palestinian flag.

The Palestinian flag emoji

The flag emoji 🇵🇸 is built from the two regional indicator letters P and S, the international code for the Palestinian territories. It has been part of the standard emoji flag set since 2015, which is why it works across phones and social platforms. To type it, search your emoji keyboard for "Palestine" or "Palestinian", or type the letters P and S as regional indicators on a platform that supports them. On most keyboards the emoji sits in the flags section under P. Since 2021 the emoji has been used heavily alongside the watermelon 🍉 in posts about Palestine.

Flags that look like the Palestinian flag

Because the pan-Arab colors are shared, several flags are easy to confuse with the Palestinian flag. The differences are small but consistent.

• Jordan: the same black, white and green stripes and red triangle, with a white seven-pointed star inside the triangle. No star means Palestine; a star means Jordan.
• Sudan: red, white and black stripes with a green triangle. The colors are the same but the stripe order and the triangle color are swapped.
• Western Sahara (Sahrawi Republic): black, white and green stripes and a red triangle, with a red crescent and star in the white band.
• Kuwait: green, white and red stripes with a black trapezoid at the hoist.
• United Arab Emirates: a red vertical band at the hoist and green, white and black horizontal stripes.

The quickest check: a plain black-white-green flag with an empty red triangle is Palestine.

The flag today

The Palestinian flag is now recognized far beyond the roughly 14 million Palestinians who claim it. It is carried at protests on every continent, painted on walls from Belfast to Cape Town, and raised on city halls and parliaments as a statement of solidarity. It has also been restricted again in places: some countries and institutions have limited its display at demonstrations, in schools or in sport, which has in turn made the colors themselves a form of speech. Supporters wear the colors when the flag cannot be raised, and the watermelon, with the same four colors, does the same job in a picture or an emoji.

A Palestinian protester, flag in one hand and a sling in the other.

Palestinian flags at a rally at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC.

Wearing the colors

Most of what we make at Native Threads carries the four colors of the flag in one form or another: embroidered Palestine maps and watermelons, vintage postcard prints and Jaffa orange labels. The embroidered Palestine oversized hoodie and the embroidered Palestine map hat use the flag colors directly, and the full range is in our Palestine clothing collection. For the wall, the Palestine wall art collection has vintage maps and photographs of Palestine from before 1948.

Native Threads' embroidered Palestine flag hoodie

Frequently asked questions

What do the colors of the Palestinian flag mean?

Black, white, green and red are the pan-Arab colors. The traditional reading links black to the Abbasids, white to the Umayyads, green to the Fatimids and red to the Hashemites who led the 1916 Arab Revolt. In modern use they are read as the past, peace, the land and the struggle for freedom.

When was the Palestinian flag created?

The design comes from the Arab Revolt flag of 1916. The Palestine Liberation Organization adopted the current flag in 1964, and the 1988 declaration of independence named it the flag of the State of Palestine.

Is the Gaza flag different from the Palestinian flag?

No. Gaza flies the Palestinian flag. There is no separate flag for the Gaza Strip.

How do I type the Palestinian flag emoji?

Search your emoji keyboard for "Palestine" or find it in the flags section under P. The emoji 🇵🇸 is made of the regional indicator letters P and S.

Why does the Jordanian flag look like the Palestinian flag?

Both descend from the Arab Revolt flag and use the same colors in the same layout. Jordan's flag has a white seven-pointed star in the red triangle; Palestine's triangle is plain.

What flag did Palestine use before 1948?

Under the British Mandate the official flag was a British ensign with the word Palestine, used mainly by the administration and at sea. Palestinian nationalists used variants of the Arab Revolt colors, and the version adopted in 1964 fixed the order black, white, green with the red triangle.

Related reading: why the watermelon became a symbol of Palestine and what the keffiyeh means.