On 09/05/2011 03:12 PM, John Hawkinson wrote:
Indeed. My point was intended to suggest that names like Asia/Gaza and Asia/West_Bank are more desirable from a user standpoint, as well as avoiding some serious political problems.
The whole issue is so politically charged that there is no neutral term. Even if we were to use 'disputed territory', we'd simply get - from both sides of the conflict - the assertion, 'there's nothing to dispute; it's ours!' 'West Bank' is acceptable in English, but is politically loaded in Hebrew. The official name in Israel is [Ezor] Yehuda vShomron (Judaea and Samaria [Area]). (Left-wing newspapers do indeed use 'haGada haMaaravit', 'West Bank' or 'haShetahim', 'the Territories'.) Many Palestinians consider the use of any of the Hebrew names, even 'haShetahim', to be a rejection of their claim to the area. Given the ambiguities inherent in Asia/East_Jerusalem, Asia/Hebron seems like the best compromise. It's the largest city that unambiguously belongs to the territory in question. It also is a politically more-or-less neutral choice, unlike either East Jerusalem or Ramallah. (Sooner or later, it's near-certain that we'll get complaints that the choice wasn't Ramallah, just as we get recurring complaints that Asia/Shanghai wasn't Asia/Beijing. That's life.) Alternatively, we can throw up our hands, assert that the territory is disputed, and state that users should set their clocks to Jerusalem or Amman according to current local practice.