Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital The PA claims East Jerusalem as its capital This is a political issue, and unresolved, though at the current time no nation maintains any embassies in Jerusalem, though several have consular offices there. The following article is relevent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positions_on_Jerusalem The UN has yet to make a formal decision, and the decision of the world's nations varies. I guess the solution is either to use both Israel and the PA's preferred capitals as the cities to specify (Jerusalem and East Jerusalem), or go with neither and use Tel Aviv and Nablus. On 2011-08-28 1:40, Ephraim Silverberg wrote:
On Sat, 27 Aug 2011, Paul Eggert wrote:
Thanks. I suppose this means we new zone Asia/East_Jerusalem, since East Jerusalem is the largest city in the West Bank.
There is no city "East Jerusalem" just like there is no city "West Jerusalem". 43% of the population of "East Jerusalem" are Jewish Israeli citizens who have no status nor citizenship rights under the Palestinian Authority. Both the Jewish and non-Jewish residents of "East Jerusalem" have the right to Israeli citizenship.
There _is_ a city "Jerusalem" which is the united capital of the State of Israel.
Any change of this status will be decided either by negotiation or by a _binding_ U.N. resolution.
The most populous city in the West Bank portion of the Palestinian Authority is Nablus.
[N.B. I know that I am opening a Pandora's Box by posting this message to the timezone list, but I could not let this pass without comment. However, since I respect the high level of professionalism of the timezone list and do not wish political arguments to overrun the list, anyone who wishes to discuss the point with me can do so over private e-mail as I will not followup further to the entire list.] _____________________________________ Ephraim Silverberg, CSE System Group, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Phone/Fax number: +972-2-5494521