The subject matter of this article is, at bottom, a practical problem. It accepts that people have a right to privacy and that this right should find proper protection in the law. It asks, simply, whether such protection is at all feasible given the particular technology of broadcast by satellite.

For the purposes of investigating this problem several issues must be addressed. First is the nature of the violation of privacy involved. Our concern here is principally with TV news broadcasts. We begin from the point where the debate over “what is in the public interest versus what the public is interested in” has ended; there will be general consensus that the content of a certain broadcast represents a violation of an individual's privacy and one about which the law should do something. An example might be the filming in the public domain of a private individual caught in the shock of personal grief or tragedy. In such a case we would need to investigate the nature of the injury involved in any subsequent broadcast of these sounds and images, and to ask what dimension, if any, is added to this injury by their simultaneous broadcast across the globe.

On January 1, 1989, the State of Israel abolished the remaining customs duties and charges, having equivalent effect on imported products originating in the European Communities (hereinafter the Community), in accordance with the Free Trade Agreement (hereinafter the FT Agreement) concluded on May 11, 1975, between the Community and Israel.

The FT Agreement, which sets out to create a free trade area in the territories of the contracting parties, was the result of the previously existing relationship between the Community and Israel, as well as the emergence of the Global Mediterranean Policy within the Community. The FT Agreement attempts to foster economic activity by promoting expansion of trade and cooperation in reciprocal areas of interest, thus creating fair competition and contributing to the development and expansion of world trade.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration was established by the First Hague Convention of 1899 on the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes, as revised by the First Hague Convention of 1907 on the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes. It is not a court in the accepted sense of the word, but consists of a panel of persons able and willing to assume the duties of arbitrator in international disputes. Israel acceded to the First Hague Convention of 1907 on 17 June 1962. Under the Convention, each State Party is entitled to form a “national group” of arbitrators, not more than four in number, and their names are included in the panel. The Israel national group today consists of the following (in order of appointment): Shabtai Rosenne (1962), Moshe Landau (1968), Meir Shamgar (1989), and Ruth Lapidoth (1989).

The aim of the Hague Conference on Private International Law is to work towards international unification of the rules in this area. Its hundred years of activity, and particularly the past forty years, have been devoted to producing conventions unifying the rules of law in the three central issues of private international law: jurisdiction, choice-of-law, and the enforcement and recognition of foreign judgments. These three distinct issues correspond to three distinct stages of litigation. The rules of jurisdiction answer the question, which state's courts have jurisdiction to decide a case or, from the perspective of any given state: does its courts have jurisdiction over the case? Choice-of-law rules, in contrast, answer the question, which law should govern the case, irrespective of where it is being adjudicated? Finally, the rules relating to foreign judgments define the terms on which a decision given in one state will be recognised and enforced in another.

I. Cultural Property: Protection in Armed Conflict

The Return of Antiquities from Israel to Egypt

Halil Iscander Shahin Candu v. The Minister of Defence.

Muhamad Hussein Suliman Shachrur v. The Military Commander of Judea and Samaria.

On 21 January, 1993 an Egyptian archeological delegation visiting Israel and the Israeli Antiquities Authority signed an agreement whereby all archeological findings taken from the Sinai after 1967 (while Israel controlled the area) would be returned to Egypt within two years and no later than 31 December, 1994. It was agreed that artifacts which had already been processed and documented would be returned to Egypt within two months. The first shipment of these antiquities was transferred to Egypt on 29 March, 1993.