his was part of a project that I did a few months ago as a fun, little alternate history exercise that concentrated on flags.

The challenge I had for myself was to do an original take on the Palestinian flag to make it look distinct from what is now yet still retaining that familiar look. My two main inspirations for my creation were the beautiful flags of Kenya and Lebanon: since the Lebanese flag incorporated the cedar tree, I wanted to incorporate the olive tree in the design of this alternate Palestinian flag; I was heavily influenced by Kenya's own national flag though the proportions of the black, white, red and green are different.

The secondary purpose behind this was creating a neutral flag, to symbolize a Palestine that is equally welcoming to the Muslims, Christians and Jews of that region. The olive and the olive tree are mentioned (and praised) many times in the Old and New Testaments as well as the Quran, the Islamic holy book. Over the years, the olives from the tree had become symbolized with peace, wisdom, glory, fertility, power and purity.

Also since this was an alternate history exercise, I considered this alternate Palestinian state to consist of the Mutasarrifat of Jerusalem, the Sanjak of Ma'an and the southern slice of the Sanjak of Hauran. There is some Jewish settlement but in the alternate universe I crafted, the Nazis do not rise into power in Germany and thus there is no Holocaust, preserving the Jewish communities in Europe that had been decimated by the tragedy of the Holocaust. Due to the lack of pressure stemming from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as better economic conditions, there is a greater presence amongst the Palestinian Christians, many of whom have emigrated to Latin America. Given that there is no Nakba (thus no major diaspora), it would be safe to presume that this Palestinian state would have a pretty big population. My personal guess is that it would have somewhere between nine to eleven million people.

As for the capital, there's no doubt it would be Jerusalem due to the significance it has in all three major Abrahamic religions. The country would be trilingual: Arabic, English and Hebrew would be considered official languages. Its government would likely be based heavily off Britain's parliamentary model instead of the semi-presidential system that the Palestinian Authority has now.

Any thoughts? I thought I did a pretty good job with this, given the positive reception I received from the guys at Bacchanallia. I might also upload the other flags that I've created over the past couple of months, depending on the feedback.