Flag: Palestinian Territories Emoji

The flag of Palestine, a horizontal tricolor of black, white, and green with a red triangle at the hoist. The colors are the classic Pan-Arab palette representing four caliphate dynasties in Arab-Islamic history: the Abbasids (black), the Umayyads (white), the Fatimids (green), and the Hashemites (red). The design is essentially the 1916 Arab Revolt flag, raised against the Ottoman Empire by Sharif Hussein of Mecca and commissioned by British diplomat Sir Mark Sykes.

The flag took on Palestinian national meaning in stages. It appeared during the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine across rural 'liberated zones.' On October 18, 1948, the All-Palestine Government adopted it, and the Arab League recognized it as Palestine's flag. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) formally adopted it in 1964, and the State of Palestine declared it the national flag on November 15, 1988.

On social, 🇵🇸 is among the most used and most contested flag emojis in the world. Its usage jumped dramatically after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023 and has stayed elevated since, driven by one of the largest diasporas in the world (~8.8 million Palestinians outside historical Palestine per the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics) alongside global solidarity posting.

The emoji is a regional indicator sequence: U+1F1F5U+1F1F5 + U+1F1F8U+1F1F8, the letters PSPS. Added in Emoji 1.0 (2015). Emojipedia catalogues it as 'Flag: Palestinian Territories' following CLDR naming; the underlying regional indicator is PS.

🇵🇸 sits at the center of one of the most intense flag-emoji stories of the social-media era. Four posting tracks drive most of the volume.

Palestinian identity posting comes from the territories (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza) and the ~8.8 million strong diaspora in Jordan, Chile, the US, Germany, and the Gulf. Chile has the largest Palestinian diaspora outside the Arab world, estimated at 450,000 to 500,000, concentrated in Santiago. The flag shows up around Palestinian Independence Day (November 15), Nakba Day (May 15), cuisine posts (musakhan, maqluba, maftoul), dabke dance videos, and olive-harvest content each October.

Global solidarity posting is the biggest single driver of recent volume. Since October 2023, 🇵🇸 has been placed in millions of Instagram and TikTok bios, paired with 🕊️, 🍉, and 🔻 in captions, and held up in protest photos in nearly every major city. The October 2023 spike was the largest single-week increase for any flag emoji on record per Google Trends.

Content-moderation controversy itself became part of the emoji's story. In October 2023, Instagram's auto-translation briefly translated Arabic-language posts containing 🇵🇸 as 'Terrorist'; Meta apologized and called it a bug. Human Rights Watch documented systemic suppression patterns on Meta's platforms. Users responded with 'algospeak': the watermelon 🍉, whose interior shares the flag's red/green/black/white, became a widely used alternative, a symbol whose use dates back to Israeli bans on displaying the flag in the 1960s-70s.

Sports and music fandom drives smaller spikes. Palestinian football team matches, keffiyehs at international events, and Eurovision flashpoints (Eric Saade's 2024 keffiyeh rebuke, audience Palestinian flags at Israel's performances) all generate 🇵🇸 bursts.

• 🏛️
  Capital: East Jerusalem (declared, not internationally realized); Ramallah (de facto administrative seat of the PA)
• 👥
  Population: ~5.6 million in historic Palestine (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza); ~14.5 million worldwide including diaspora (PCBS, end-2025)
• 🗺️
  Area: ~6,020 km² (West Bank 5,655 km² + Gaza 365 km²)
• 💴
  Currencies: New Israeli shekel (ILS, ₪) widely used; Jordanian dinar (JOD) in West Bank commerce
• 🗣️
  Languages: Arabic (Levantine dialect), official. English widely used in NGO, business, and academic contexts
• 📞
  Calling code: +970
• ⏰
  Time zone: Asia/Gaza, Asia/Hebron (IST UTC+2, IDT UTC+3 in summer)
• 🌐
  Internet TLD: .ps

Foods that show up next to 🇵🇸

Landmarks that anchor posts about Palestine

Palestine's flag has the unusual property of being older than every Palestinian state project it's been attached to. The base design, a horizontal black-white-green tricolor with a red triangle at the hoist, was commissioned by the British Foreign Office in 1916 for Sharif Hussein of Mecca's Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Sir Mark Sykes, of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, picked the four Pan-Arab dynasty colors.

The flag first carried specifically Palestinian meaning during the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine, a three-year rebellion against British Mandate rule that featured the Arab Revolt flag across rural 'liberated zones.' After the 1948 war and the Nakba, the All-Palestine Government in Gaza formally adopted the flag on October 18, 1948, and the Arab League recognized it.

The PLO era. Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization formally readopted the flag in 1964. Between 1967 and 1993, Israeli military orders banned its public display in the occupied territories. Workarounds proliferated: a watermelon slice, with red flesh and green rind, could be held in hand without legal consequence. The Washington Post and other outlets documented this origin story during the 2023 revival of the symbol.

State adoption. On November 15, 1988, at the Palestine National Council meeting in Algiers, the PLO declared the State of Palestine and adopted the flag as its national symbol. On November 29, 2012, the UN General Assembly granted Palestine non-member observer state status by a vote of 138 in favor, 9 against, 41 abstaining. As of 2026, 157 of 193 UN member states recognize the State of Palestine, including four of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, UK). The United States has not recognized Palestine and has used its Security Council veto to block full UN membership.

The emoji joined the flag set in Emoji 1.0 (2015), categorized under regional indicator sequence PS.

• ⛪
  January 7: Eastern Orthodox Christmas: Bethlehem's Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Syriac communities mark Christmas on the Julian calendar. Procession through Manger Square; smaller crowd than December 25 but culturally important.
• 🌙
  Floating: Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr (2026: February-March): Iftar tables, late-night Jerusalem Old City markets, kanafeh and qatayef posting. Eid al-Fitr March 20-22, 2026.
• 🌍
  March 30: Land Day (Yom al-Ard): Marks the 1976 general strike against Israeli land expropriations in the Galilee. Annual protests across the West Bank, Gaza, and Arab communities inside Israel.
• 🔑
  May 15: Nakba Day: Marks the 1948 displacement of ~750,000 Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli war. Annual keys-and-return-symbol posts; one of the year's three biggest 🇵🇸 windows.
• 🕌
  Floating: Eid al-Adha (2026: May 28-30): Festival of Sacrifice. Family gatherings; community aid drives; lamb-and-mansaf tables across the territories and the diaspora.
• 🎉
  November 15: Palestinian Independence Day: Marks the 1988 Declaration of Independence in Algiers. Official ceremonies in Ramallah; diaspora gatherings worldwide. A major 🇵🇸 spike each year.
• 🤝
  November 29: International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People: UN observance since 1978, marking the 1947 partition vote anniversary. 🇵🇸 widely posted across international accounts; the UN itself marks the day at headquarters in New York.
• 🎄
  December 25: Christmas: Bethlehem becomes the center of global Christmas coverage. The Palestinian Christian community has shrunk from ~12% of the population in 1948 to under 2% today, but the holiday posting remains prominent.

• •The watermelon 🍉 has been a Palestinian symbol since the 1960s-70s, when Israeli military orders banned public display of the flag in occupied territories from 1967 to 1993. Red flesh, white rind, green skin, black seeds. Artist Sliman Mansour was among those who popularized the motif after a 1980 incident at a Ramallah gallery.
• •157 of 193 UN member states recognize the State of Palestine as of 2026, roughly 81% of UN membership. That includes four of the five permanent members of the Security Council (China, France, Russia, UK). The US has not extended recognition and has used its veto to block full UN membership.
• •The Palestinian flag design dates to 1916, commissioned by the British Foreign Office for Sharif Hussein of Mecca's Arab Revolt and designed by Sir Mark Sykes. The same design parents Jordan, Iraq (pre-2008), and Sudan.
• •Chile has the largest Palestinian diaspora outside the Arab world, estimated at 450,000 to 500,000. Club Deportivo Palestino, founded 1920 in Santiago, wears the flag on every kit. In 2014 the club briefly replaced the number 1 on its jerseys with an outline of historic Palestine and was fined by FIFA.
• •The Palestinian national dish is musakhan: roast chicken with caramelized onions, sumac, and pine nuts over taboon bread, traditionally eaten during the fall olive harvest with the first-pressed oil of the year.
• •Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimates the total Palestinian population worldwide at 14.5 million, with roughly 5.6 million in historic Palestine (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza) and 8.8 million in the diaspora as of end-2025.