Israel is moving its clock forward at 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. on Thursday night/Friday morning, bringing in Daylight Savings Time.

Moving the clock ahead in the spring normally means a missed night of sleep but since Friday is not a workday for most Israelis, those whose children don’t wake them up in the wee hours of the morning can sleep in and will also have an extra hour to bring in Shabbos.

Daylight savings time will continue for 212 days and will end on Sunday, October 25, 2020.

This year, even changing the clock was affected by the coronavirus crisis. An initiative to delay the switch to daylight savings time to discourage people, especially children and the elderly, from being on the streets for additional hours in the evening was proposed last week by Interior Minister Aryeh Deri and approved by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit approved the proposal and the Justice Ministry was ready to assist to Deri to legislate the emergency bill and have it legally approved.

However, following a telephone conference held on Monday led by the deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council (NSC), a decision was made that the possibility of delaying daylight savings time until May 1 will not able to be implemented and daylight savings time will begin this week overnight Thursday, March 26 at 2 a.m. (ב’ ניסן).

On Sunday evening, Israel’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Authority and the Digital Israel National Initiative announced that the transition to daylight savings time is automatically programmed in the operating systems of servers, computers, communications equipment and even cell phones.

In order to change the date of daylight savings time, the manufacturers of the above-mentioned systems must produce an updated version, distribute it and install the update on every server, computer and phone system of Israel’s government computer system and many other systems. The update would require many days of work and it’s not feasible to complete the process by Thursday night of this week.

Furthermore, a situation in which some computers are updated and others are not is liable to cause malfunctions and a breakdown of computer systems. An additional factor is that the absence of many employees in the private sector will further complicate carrying out such a change.

In light of the above, a final decision was announced on Monday morning that there is no possibility of delaying daylight savings time for the following reasons:

1. It requires a several-month technological assessment.
2. Media authorities are currently overloaded and any failure is liable to disable entire systems.
3. There is a risk of impairing the operational competence of the IDF and medical technology systems in hospitals.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)