---------- From: amos@nsof.co.il[SMTP:amos@nsof.co.il] Sent: Sunday, February 15, 1998 7:48 AM To: tz@elsie.nci.nih.gov Subject: Palestine time In the asia file you include:

# Zone NAME GMTOFF RULES FORMAT [UNTIL] Zone Asia/Gaza 2:17:52 - LMT 1900 Oct 2:00 - EET 1957 May 10 2:00 EgyptAsia EE%sT 1967 Jun 30 2:00 Zion I%sT

From 1917 until 1948/5/15, all of Palestine, including the parts now known as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, was under British rule. Therefore the rules given for Israel for that period, apply there too. (Though I find the name "Zion" rather inappropriate -- why not just call it "Israel" or "Palestine"?) The Gaza Strip was under Egyptian rule between 1948/5/15 until 1967/6/5 (except a short occupation by Israel from 1956/11 till 1957/3, but no time zone was affected then). It was never formally annexed to Egypt, though. The rest of Palestine was under Jordanian rule at that time, formally annexed in 1950 as the West Bank (and the word "Trans" was dropped from the country's previous name of "the Hashemite Kingdom of the Trans-Jordan"). So the rules for Jordan for that time apply. Major towns in that area are Nablus (Shchem), El-Halil (Hebron), Ramallah, and East Jerusalem. Both areas were occupied by Israel in June 1967, but not annexed (except for East Jerusalem). They were on Israel time since then; there might have been a Military Governor's order about time zones, but I'm not aware of any (such orders may have been issued semi-annually whenever summer time was in effect, but maybe the legal aspect of time was just neglected). The Palestinian Authority was established in 1993, and got hold of most towns in the West Bank and Gaza by 1995. I know that in order to demonstrate some manner of independence, they have been switching to summer time and back on a different schedule than Israel's, but I don't know when this was started, or what algorithm is used (most likely the Jordanian one). To summarize, the table should probably look something like that: Area \ when | 1918-1947 | 1948-1967 | 1967-1995 | 1996- ------------+-----------+-----------+-----------+----------- Israel | Zion | Zion | Zion | Zion West bank | Zion | Jordan | Zion | Jordan Gaza | Zion | Egypt | Zion | Jordan I guess more info may be available from the PA's web page (if/when they have one). -- Amos Shapir Paper: nSOF Parallel Software, Ltd. Givat-Hashlosha 48800, Israel Tel: +972 3 9388551 Fax: +972 3 9388552 GEO: 34 55 15 E / 32 05 52 N