[tz] Extending winter time in Palestine

[Paul Eggert]

On 2024-02-03 13:06, brian.inglis--- via tz wrote:
> There should be some better sources available of accurate astronomical 
> moon sighting calculations

The timestamps TZDB documents are civil timestamps, not religious ones. 
This is why TZDB cites the Palestinian Cabinet's predictions, not the 
astronomical observations that are the basis of the Islamic calendar.

Although I don't know, I guess that start-of-Ramadan crescent moon 
sightings in Palestine are evaluated by an investigation committee of 
the Palestinian Fatwa House <https://www.darifta.ps/>. If so, surely the 
Cabinet would defer to the Fatwa House if the Cabinet's conservative 
predictions of a period of time around Ramadan turn out to be not 
conservative enough.

However, if this (dare I say it?) astronomically improbable event 
occurs, that won't change the start and end of Ramadan - all it would 
mean is that legal clock changes wouldn't match Ramadan that year, due 
to the Cabinet's mistake. At most the Cabinet would make some 
last-second correction (perhaps even an ex-post-facto correction!) and 
tzdata could continue to cite just the Cabinet. This is because TZDB's 
goal is to document what human clocks say, not what the earth and moon 
are doing.