Israel will switch to standard time at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning after daylight savings time was extended by 3 weeks. Clocks go back an hour at 2 a.m. to 1 a.m.
Instead of moving clocks back on October 6 Israel waited until the end of the month to do so after Interior Minister Gideon Sa ar agreed to extend daylight savings time by three weeks.
I announced when I set up the committee that the objective was to find the best arrangement for the citizens of Israel Sa ar said at a press conference. After checking the committee s work and its recommendations I decided to change the status quo.
On October 6 Israelis who fought for years to have daylight savings time substantially extended found that their phones and computers ignored new state directives and sent their clocks an hour back overnight.
Many mobile phones were already programmed to expect the clock change to go ahead over last weekend and were not able to readjust for the later October end to daylight savings. The bug affected some Google phones iPhones Android and iOS software BlackBerrys and Symbian phones.
Local cellphone providers tried to preempt the problem by sending text messages to their users last week advising to set their phones to Athens time which also has October 27 as the start of winter time.
The thorny issue of when and how to implement daylight saving time was the focus of a special committee appointed by Sa ar (Likud) in April.
Headed by Shmuel Abuav a former Construction Ministry director general and head of the Or Yarok ( Green Light in Hebrew) road safety organization the committee examined the current daylight saving time policy and its impact on road safety energy consumption and the economy.
The additional hour of daylight for the citizens of Israel has a positive influence on every one of the central aspects of life Sa ar said adding that he would immediately begin working on getting government and Knesset approval for the legislation.
Daylight saving time went into effect across Israel on Friday March 29 turning 2 a.m. into 3 a.m.
In November the Knesset passed legislation extending daylight savings time until the first Sunday after October 1. Before that standard time would begin the Saturday night before Yom Kippur so that the day s fast which is pegged to nightfall would end an hour earlier.
Because the Hebrew calendar is lunar Yom Kippur can fall between mid September and mid October which used to mean that Israelis returned to standard time as much as a month and a half before most other countries where daylight savings time ends on November 1.
As a result the issue of the seasonal time transition became contentious among Israelis and was caught up in political tensions between religious and secular politicians.
Religious parties generally pushed for the early time change to ease the Yom Kippur fast and some secular activists protested that the change was unnecessarily inconvenient and expensive. They pointed to a relatively early loss of daylight hours and a resultant rise in electricity bills as well as car accidents as people who would otherwise drive home from work in daylight were forced to drive in darkness.
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