Until my drawing skills improve, one fairly immediate solution to the dilemma would be to alter my site so that typing “Palestine” automatically adds both “West Bank” and “Gaza” to the list, though I should then have to make the same changes to include Hong Kong and Macau as part of China.

I realised when designing the page that the notion of country would be a heated issue, and was myself rather surprised that Wikipedia had chosen to split Palestine into two separate territories.

Again, from a practical standpoint, I expected that only a very small percentage of people who play the game would know all the countries, particularly the former SSRs, so intended this to be more of a learning tool than an test of prior knowledge.

I recognise the inadequacies of the quiz, but this article (and your comment!) go part-way towards making up for them.

If your definition of “country” is broad enough to include Macau, Hong Kong, the West Bank, and Gaza, then other territories that are disputed or specially administrated should be included, such as Nagorno-Karabakh, the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Xinjiang, Tamil Eelam, South Ossetia, Aceh, Waziristan, North Cyprus, and any number of other regions that have rebel groups claiming to be independent governments. These areas I’ve listed are no less independent nations than is the Gaza Strip.

While there is no such nation as Palestine, Palestinians do have representation at the UN and many other international groups. However, further dividing Palestine into Gaza and the West Bank, even though there has been a recent rift in governance, is not logical. Even though Gaza has come under the control of Hamas and the West Bank is controlled by Fatah, this political distinction is no more a sign of two independent countries than the rebellions in Aceh (Indonesia), Chechnya (Russia), or Waziristan (Pakistan). And several areas have more legitimate claims of statehood than does Gaza, such as Nagorno-Karabakh.

If you want to quiz people on how well they know countries of Asia, I would leave off all of the regions that are not fully independent, such as Hong Kong and Macau, as well as regions that are so disputed that they are not recognized as independent by a majority of other nations. This would allow you to include Taiwan without including the breakaway areas of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Caucasus states, etc., which are not shown on most maps as separate nations.

However, you could also apply other criteria, such as a seat at the UN (yes to Palestine, no to Taiwan), competing separately at the Olympics (yes to Hong Kong), etc.