Israeli Daylight Saving Law

The Israeli Daylight Saving Law (he|חוק קביעת הזמן "IPA|ħoq qvi'at ha-zman") was approved by the Knesset in 1992, replacing the British mandate time act inherited by Israel. Until 1992 daylight saving was operated by an order of the minister of the interior. In 1980 the authority of the minister for this matter was contested in an appeal to the supreme court. The supreme court decided that the minister's authority was indeed more limited than the common practice, as he may only decide on the dates of DST while its operation is unquestionable. Following this decision the Knesset amended the Time Act so the minister will also have the authority to abolish DST in a certain year. The 1992 time zone law cancelled the Time Act, and stipulated that DST will be operated for at least 150 days each year, and that the final dates will be decided by the minister of the Interior, subject to the approval of the Knesset committee for internal affairs.

Until 2005, the start and end of DST each year was established in an ad hoc fashion as the result of haggling between political parties representing various sectors of Israeli society. Parties representing religious groups wanted the start delayed till after Passover and the end to precede Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, while the secular parties would argue for starting it earlier and ending it later. Thus, there was no established rule that could guarantee a predictable changeover in either direction. The debates about a fixed rule for determining the dates of DST went on for years, and resulted in a suggestion that DST will start on the 2nd day of Passover and end on the weekend between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. This suggestion was rejected as it stipulated an annual DST period of only 5 months, and yet it served as the basis of the final compromise.

The long expected change came in early 2005 when a law was passed establishing the onset of DST every year at 2:00 AM on the last Friday before April 2, i.e. on the Friday on or before April 1 (irrespective of when Passover falls) and ending at 2:00 AM on the Sunday between Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur (note that weekends in Israel are Friday to Saturday). This effectively ended the annual debate.

In the past, the unpredictability of DST in Israel became frustrating enough that Microsoft Windows stopped trying to track changes and just made Israeli time be Greenwich Mean Time plus two hours (GMT+2) (and disabled the daylight saving option). This has led to various ad hoc solutions to the problem in Windows systems and other Microsoft software (e.g. Outlook calendar entries are often off by an hour when shared, due to the lack of DST support).

References

* [http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=79377 Arutz-7 news story: " Summer Time Begins Friday Morning", 16:12 Mar 31, '05]
* [http://www.lingnu.com/support.html#timezone Lingnu's Windows Timezone Files for Israeli DST]
* [http://www.microsoft.com/israel/support/tips/other/DLSTIssues.mspx Microsoft (Hebrew Language) Support entry regarding daylight saving time in Israel]
* [ftp://ftp.cs.huji.ac.il/pub/tz/announcements/ Official Israeli government releases regarding daylight saving time]
* [ftp://ftp.cs.huji.ac.il/pub/tz/israel/ Timezone configuration files for various operating systems]