Israel Timezone Changes -- 2005 and Beyond

[Ephraim Silverberg]

On Mon, 20 Sep 2004, I wrote:

>                                                  this is the last legislated
> changeover date -- there are no official dates for 2005 and beyond.
>
> The latest rumour, however, is that in 2005, when the clock changes to Dayligh
> Saving Time (date as yet unknown), the move will be a two-hour leap forward
> (from UTC+0200 to UTC+0400) and then, in the fall, the clock will move back
> only an hour to UTC+0300 thus effectively moving Israel's timezone from
> UTC+0200 to UTC+0300.

Even though the draft law for the above did pass the Ministerial Committee for
Legislative Matters three months ago, it was voted down in today's Cabinet
meeting.  The current suggestion is to keep the current timezone at UTC+0200
but have an extended period of Daylight Saving Time (UTC+0300) from the
beginning of Passover holiday in the spring to after the Tabernacle holiday in
the fall (i.e. the dates of which are governed by the Hebrew calendar but this
means at least 184 days of DST).  However, this is only a suggestion that was
raised in today's cabinet meeting and has not yet been drafted.

Will update if anything concrete comes out of the new suggestion though I
have the feeling that the issue will undergo quite a few more metamorphoses
until the actual enactment of Daylight Saving Time in 2005.
___________________________________________________________________________
Ephraim Silverberg, CSE System Group,        Phone number:    972-2-6585521
Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.        Fax number:      972-2-5617723
WWW: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~ephraim       E-mail: ephraim at cse.huji.ac.il