| Sid,
April 16th is the last day of Pesach, but I am almost certain that the
airport is NOT closed. El Al does not fly on Shabbat and Holidays, but
the airport is not closed on these days and other carriers do land.
Generally speaking, Easter Sunday has very little impact in Israel.
... Monty
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| Hopefully someone in Israel will reply here...
I would expect that that is a real tricky time to try to travel into
Israel. You're right that Pesach ends at sunset Monday instead of
Tuesday within Israel; that probably means tha travel is difficult or
impossible on Friday and Saturday (due to Shabbat) and Sunday and
Monday (due to the end of the holiday), so your co-worker may be stuck
with the overnight flight on Monday (if that still exists - I did that
years ago) or flying during the day on Tuesday. Easter Sunday won't
matter except that security around the Christian shrines may be beefed
up. He may have to travel the previous Thursday or something equally
tricky (only if someone at the other end makes the arrangements).
The best bet is to have the people he is meeting with make the Israel
end of the arrangements. After all, they must know that they scheduled
this meeting immediately after Pesach. The following week would have
been an easier time to pick!
If he can't get hold of them, calling the nearest El Al office will
probably provide accurate info about when the airport is closed, etc.
I didn't happen to be in the country over a major holiday when I was in
Isrtael 7 years ago (I'd love to go back, too!!), but nearly everything
closed up tight for Shabbat, starting after lunch on Friday, so if you
didn't make prior arragements, you would be stranded and starving
wherever you happened to be (unless your diet allows you to eat in the
Arab markets). At that time there was a big fight going on because
some of the inter-city bus routes operated on Saturday afternoons, but
I don't know how that all came out. Only the (expen$ive) inter-city
cabs would run on Saturday. I would expect that major holidays would
be the same way, unless things have changed drastically since then.
(it's really kind of peaceful, if you are Jewish yourself - a real
"sabbath rest" - but a major logisitics problem if you're not).
/Charlotte
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| Sounds like he might be visiting our group. He should contact us directly
if he has any questions, since we have loads of experience with Digies coming
here on business -- and Murphy's Law guarantees that chagim often complicate
our scheduling.
If he's not sure whom to get in touch with here, have him send me mail.
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