Daylight saving time policy to be re-examined

The thorny issue of when and how to implement daylight saving time in Israel will be the focus of a new committee to be appointed by Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar (Likud).

Headed by Shmuel Abuav, a former Construction Ministry director general and head of the Or Yarok (“Green Light” in Hebrew) road safety organization, the committee will examine the current daylight saving time policy and its impact on road safety, energy consumption and the economy.

The committee is to examine if an alternative arrangement is possible, and will present its finding “within a few months,” Israel Radio reported Sunday.

Daylight savings time went into effect across Israel on Friday, March 29, turning 2 a.m. instantly into 3 a.m., and will last until October 6.

In November, the Knesset passed legislation extending daylight savings time until the first Sunday after October 1. Before that, standard time would begin the Saturday night before Yom Kippur, so that the day’s fast, which is pegged to nightfall, would end an hour earlier.

Because the Hebrew calendar is lunar, Yom Kippur can fall between mid-September and mid-October, which used to mean that Israelis returned to standard time as much as a month and a half before most other countries, where daylight savings time ends on November 1.

As a result, the issue of the seasonal time transition became contentious among Israelis, and was caught up in political tensions between religious and secular politicians.

Religious parties generally pushed for the early time change to ease the Yom Kippur fast, and some secular activists protested that the change was unnecessarily inconvenient and expensive. They pointed to a relatively early loss of daylight hours and a resultant rise in electricity bills as well as car accidents as people who would otherwise drive home from work in daylight were forced to drive in darkness.