Flag of Palestine

Palestine

Use	State flag and ensign
Proportion	1:2
Design	A horizontal tricolour of black, white, and green; with a red triangle based at the hoist
Variant flag of Palestine
Use	State flag and ensign
Proportion	1:2
Designed by	A horizontal tricolour of black, white, and green; with a red triangle based at the hoist charged with the national emblem in the upper hoist corner
Variant flag of Palestine
Design	Version used by the All-Palestine Government, identical to the Flag of the Arab Revolt.

The Palestinian flag (Arabic: علم فلسطين‎‎) is based on the Flag of the Arab Revolt, and is used to represent the State of Palestine and the Palestinian people.

The flag is a tricolor of three equal horizontal stripes (black, white, and green from top to bottom) overlaid by a red triangle issuing from the hoist. These are the Pan-Arab colors. The flag is almost identical to that of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and extremely similar to the Flag of Jordan and Flag of Western Sahara, all of which draw their inspiration from the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule (1916–1918). Prior to being the flag of the Palestinian people, it was the flag of the short lived Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan. The flag of the Arab Revolt had the same graphic form, but the colours were arranged differently (white on the bottom, rather than in the middle).

The flag used by the Arab Palestinian nationalists in the first half of the 20th century is the flag of the 1916 Arab Revolt. The origins of the flag are the subject of dispute and mythology. In one version, the colours were chosen by the Arab nationalist 'Literary Club' in Istanbul in 1909, based on the words of the 13th-century Arab poet Safi al-Din al-Hili:

Ask the high rising spears, of our aspirations
Bring witness the swords, did we lose hope
We are a band, honor halts our souls
Of beginning with harm, those who won't harm us
White are our deeds, black are our battles,
Green are our fields, red are our swords.

Another version credits the Young Arab Society, formed in Paris in 1911. Yet another version is that the flag was designed by Sir Mark Sykes of the British Foreign Office. Whatever the correct story, the flag was used by Sharif Hussein by 1917 at the latest and quickly became regarded as the flag of the Arab national movement in the Mashriq.