West Bank and the Gaza Strip will have different time zones

Kevin Kenny kkenny2 at nycap.rr.com
Tue Sep 6 12:07:20 UTC 2011


On 09/05/2011 03:12 PM, John Hawkinson wrote:
> Indeed. My point was intended to suggest that names like Asia/Gaza and
> Asia/West_Bank are more desirable from a user standpoint, as well as
> avoiding some serious political problems.

The whole issue is so politically charged that there is no neutral
term.  Even if we were to use 'disputed territory', we'd simply
get - from both sides of the conflict - the assertion, 'there's
nothing to dispute; it's ours!'

'West Bank' is acceptable in English, but is politically loaded in
Hebrew. The official name in Israel is [Ezor] Yehuda vShomron (Judaea
and Samaria [Area]). (Left-wing newspapers do indeed use 'haGada
haMaaravit', 'West Bank' or 'haShetahim', 'the Territories'.)
Many Palestinians consider the use of any of the Hebrew names,
even 'haShetahim', to be a rejection of their claim to the area.

Given the ambiguities inherent in Asia/East_Jerusalem, Asia/Hebron
seems like the best compromise.  It's the largest city that
unambiguously belongs to the territory in question. It also
is a politically more-or-less neutral choice, unlike either
East Jerusalem or Ramallah. (Sooner or later, it's near-certain that
we'll get complaints that the choice wasn't Ramallah, just as
we get recurring complaints that Asia/Shanghai wasn't Asia/Beijing.
That's life.)

Alternatively, we can throw up our hands, assert that the territory is
disputed, and state that users should set their clocks to Jerusalem or 
Amman according to current local practice.




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