Tim Parenti wrote:

Proposed patch attached which adjusts our spring guesses based on this and recent practice.

Thanks. I installed that into the development version, along with the attached further patches to some commentary about recent changes.

FWIW, I don't yet see any 2019 decrees for "التوقيت الصيفي" or "توقيت صيفي" at http://www.palestinecabinet.gov.ps/Website/ar/NDecrees/

Nor do I. It would be nice to get some sort of governmental confirmation. That being said, it does appear we need a new release quite soon, since the entries for Palestine seem to be incorrect for timestamps starting about 5 hours ago.

Hi, The Palestinian cabinet announced today that the switch to DST will be on Fri Mar 29th 2019 by advancing the clock by 60 minutes the decree signing date is Mar 12th but it was not published till today. The decree does not specify the exact time of switch http://palestinecabinet.gov.ps/Website/AR/NDecrees/ViewFile.ashx?ID=e54e9ea1... BR On Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 5:42 AM Tim Parenti <tim@timtimeonline.com> wrote:

On Sat, 23 Mar 2019 at 23:30, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

...

it does appear we need a new release quite soon, since the entries for Palestine seem to be incorrect for timestamps starting about 5 hours ago.

~29 hours, by my calculation (01:00 EET Saturday, 23:00Z Friday). But yes.

-- Tim Parenti

On 3/26/19 5:26 AM, Sharef Mustafa wrote:

The Palestinian cabinet announced today that the switch to DST will be on Fri Mar 29th 2019 by advancing the clock by 60 minutes

the decree signing date is Mar 12th but it was not published till today.

The decree does not specify the exact time of switch

http://palestinecabinet.gov.ps/Website/AR/NDecrees/ViewFile.ashx?ID=e54e9ea1...

Ouch. That URL specifies 2019-03-29 (Friday) and uses the same wording as the following URLs from previous years: http://www.palestinecabinet.gov.ps/Website/AR/NDecrees/ViewFile.ashx?ID=e7a4... http://www.palestinecabinet.gov.ps/WebSite/ar/ViewDetails?ID=31728 which specified 2018-03-24 (Saturday) and 2016-03-26 (Saturday). None of the decrees specify a time, and in the earlier two years tzdata uses 01:00. Either the Palestinian cabinet has changed its practice and is now switching Fridays at some time ([a] 01:00? [b] 24:00?) or they did not actually change practice and their decree is intended to mean 2019-03-29 (Friday) at [c] 25:00, i.e. 2019-03-30 (Saturday) at 01:00; ... or we got the data wrong in previous years and nobody reported it. If the correct answer is [c] then tzdata 2019a is OK as-is. If it is [a] or [b] or something else, we should fix tzdata and issue a 2019b. The Ramallah News URL https://ramallah.news/post/123610 that is cited in tzdata no longer works (in any of the three forms cited in drafts); it now gives a 404. Of the two other URLs Even Scharning mentioned, http://palweather.ps/ar/node/50136.html says "Daylight saving time is due to start on Saturday, March 30, and the clock is to be presented at midnight on Friday" [Google translation], and http://pnn.ps/news/401130 says "Summer time is due to begin on Saturday, March 30, and the clock will start at 60 minutes at midnight on Friday" [Google translation]. Given all this above, a plausible answer is [b] and the attached proposed patch implements [b] and guesses a similar pattern in future years. It would be nice to get a reliable confirmation of this, though. Plus, it'd be nice to know whether the practice will change this fall, too. Perhaps someone who writes Arabic could email the relevant cabinet contact and mention the issues Matt describes in <https://codeofmatt.com/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/>.

As per the wording of the cabinet decree: "اعتبارا من *صباح *يوم الجمعة الموافق 29 اذار 2019" "As of *morning *of Fri Mar 29th 2019" Thus it is safe to assume the DST change occurs on Fri Mar29th at 01:00 Please note that Palestine has no specific method that determines DST changes (yet), recently there has been some activities within the ministry of telecom to tackle this issue, however their efforts were halted due to the recent government change as the new prime minister is forming his cabinet BR On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 11:08 PM Tim Parenti <tim@timtimeonline.com> wrote:

A search for "التوقيت الصيفي" on Ramallah News supports the 2019-03-30 00:00 theory: https://ramallah.news/post/82650/ appears to be dated 18 March 2019, and says (Google's translation):

"Daylight saving time is expected to start in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Friday, March 29, bringing the clock forward. Daylight saving time starts on Saturday, March 30, with the clock advancing 60 minutes ahead of midnight on Saturday."

-- Tim Parenti

On Tue, 26 Mar 2019 at 16:55, Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

...

On 3/26/19 5:26 AM, Sharef Mustafa wrote:

...

The Palestinian cabinet announced today that the switch to DST will be on Fri Mar 29th 2019 by advancing the clock by 60 minutes

the decree signing date is Mar 12th but it was not published till today.

The decree does not specify the exact time of switch

http://palestinecabinet.gov.ps/Website/AR/NDecrees/ViewFile.ashx?ID=e54e9ea1...

...

Ouch. That URL specifies 2019-03-29 (Friday) and uses the same wording as the following URLs from previous years:

http://www.palestinecabinet.gov.ps/Website/AR/NDecrees/ViewFile.ashx?ID=e7a4... http://www.palestinecabinet.gov.ps/WebSite/ar/ViewDetails?ID=31728

which specified 2018-03-24 (Saturday) and 2016-03-26 (Saturday). None of the decrees specify a time, and in the earlier two years tzdata uses 01:00.

Either the Palestinian cabinet has changed its practice and is now switching Fridays at some time ([a] 01:00? [b] 24:00?) or they did not actually change practice and their decree is intended to mean 2019-03-29 (Friday) at [c] 25:00, i.e. 2019-03-30 (Saturday) at 01:00; ... or we got the data wrong in previous years and nobody reported it.

If the correct answer is [c] then tzdata 2019a is OK as-is. If it is [a] or [b] or something else, we should fix tzdata and issue a 2019b.

The Ramallah News URL https://ramallah.news/post/123610 that is cited in tzdata no longer works (in any of the three forms cited in drafts); it now gives a 404. Of the two other URLs Even Scharning mentioned, http://palweather.ps/ar/node/50136.html says "Daylight saving time is due to start on Saturday, March 30, and the clock is to be presented at midnight on Friday" [Google translation], and http://pnn.ps/news/401130 says "Summer time is due to begin on Saturday, March 30, and the clock will start at 60 minutes at midnight on Friday" [Google translation].

Given all this above, a plausible answer is [b] and the attached proposed patch implements [b] and guesses a similar pattern in future years.

It would be nice to get a reliable confirmation of this, though. Plus, it'd be nice to know whether the practice will change this fall, too. Perhaps someone who writes Arabic could email the relevant cabinet contact and mention the issues Matt describes in <https://codeofmatt.com/on-the-timing-of-time-zone-changes/>.

On 26/03/2019 22:50, Paul Eggert wrote:

For what it's worth, the more-recent news report https://www.raya.ps/news/1061956.html says " أعلن المتحدث الرسمي باسم حكومة تسيير الأعمال يوسف المحمود، اليوم الثلاثاء، بدء العمل بالتوقيت الصيفي، اعتبارا من فجر يوم الجمعة الموافق 29/3/2019." which Google Translate renders as "The official spokesman of the government of business, Youssef Mahmoud, said Tuesday, the start of the summer time, starting at dawn on Friday, 29/3/2019."

The Arab world ( or should that be a religious designation? is it just Islamic? ) does still lie to rely on using observable events as the key points in their calendars? Which does not help when on some occasions that can result in a change happening a week earlier or later. In this case is the time of a 'predicted dawn' a more acceptable compromise where an actuate time is not included in the 'legislation'? In practice it's just when locals involved in over night activities actually change the clock that is left somewhat flexible by this 'decree'? It's saying 'when you get up change your clock' ... rather than when the sun comes up ... although 'Salat al-fajr' first prayers of the day is designated 'dawn, before sunrise' rather than a particular 'clock time' so to Palestinians dawn is an accurate event and will be indicated by the first call to prayers! But somewhat difficult to document prior to the event :) -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - https://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - https://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - https://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - https://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - https://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk

On Mär 27 2019, Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca> wrote:

is still available and says confusingly:

"Daylight saving time in Palestine Monday 18 March 2019 12:01 AM GMT Jerusalem Daylight saving time is expected to start in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Friday, March 29, bringing the clock forward. Daylight saving time starts on Saturday, March 30, with the clock advancing 60 minutes ahead of midnight on Saturday.

So the switch happens on Fri, 23:00, switching to Sat, 00:00. Andreas. -- Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org GPG Key fingerprint = 7578 EB47 D4E5 4D69 2510 2552 DF73 E780 A9DA AEC1 "And now for something completely different."

On 3/29/19 5:10 AM, Michael H Deckers via tz wrote:

   This does not agree with the prayer times for Gaza as announced in [https://www.islamicfinder.org/world/palestine/281133/gaza-prayer-times]:

Yes, although one issue I have is whether the authorities in Gaza are following the Palestinian Authority's lead here. They are often at loggerheads, and have disagreed about clocks in the past.