On 11/5/18 10:04 PM, Ephraim Silverberg wrote:
The current rule (since 2013) is "the Friday before the last Sunday in March" -- reference: ftp://ftp.cs.huji.ac.il/pub/tz/announcements/2013+law.pdf
In theory we could change the last spring-forward Rule line for Zion from "Mar Fri>=23 2:00" to "Mar lastSun -46:00" to try to capture this rule more precisely. However, as the two strings are equivalent, neither captures the original rule precisely, and the "-46:00" is more likely to trip up non-zic parsers, it's probably better to leave it alone.
Ministry of Interior historical announcements should be taken with a grain of salt. What officially marks the dates of DST start/stop is the Knesset Registrar ("Reshumot"). I have put it on my bucket list for my retirement years to check the accuracy of the Ministry of Interior dates also by viewing old newspaper archives at Israel's National Library. That would be helpful, thanks. For the case of 1980, Israel Sagi has already checked the archives of Yedioth Ahronot. Israel, could you please send us a photo of the relevant article or articles? Thanks.