Disputes about the Christian Holy Places have played a major part in the history of the Middle East and indeed of Europe for many centuries. The main issues of these conflicts are still unsolved, and the fact that the Sanctuaries are now under the control of the State of Israel has added a new dimension to the problems.

This study tries to investigate the question of the jurisdiction over the Christian Sanctuaries as it presents itself today. It does not deal with the Holy Places of Judaism and Islam since their treatment, in spite of many common elements, requires different considerations.

The disputes about the Christian Holy Places are essentially disputes among Christian communities, and not, as might be assumed, controversies between Christians on one side and members of other religions—Moslems or Jews—or the government of the country, on the other. They spring ultimately from the divisions of the Church; and although political and national interests frequently played a part, they must be seen first and foremost in the context of the religious issues involved.

Western legal systems diverge radically in their approaches to setting limits on the privilege of self-defence. Some systems incline to the view that a person defending his or another life or property may use all the force necessary to stifle an aggressive attack. Taken to the extreme, this means that if there is no other way to apprehend a thief escaping with a petty bounty, one may shoot him—if necessary, shoot to kill. In contrast to this approach, which is adverse to limits on the use of necessary force, another set of Western jurisdictions insists that the degree of force meet two desiderata: it must be both necessary and proportional to the interest protected. The requirement of proportionality or reasonableness means that there are some cases, like petty thievery, where the cost of protecting a threatened interest may be so great that one must surrender the interest rather than inflict grievous harm on the aggressor.

The notion that a security interest could be created in any kind of property through registration rather than through transfer of possession seemed, until a few years ago, to be impractical and undesirable. When the Pledges Bill was debated in the Knesset, in 1965, the Minister of Justice objected to such a notion, saying that it was too revolutionary, and that it would cause many technical difficulties. Yet, when the debate on the Pledges Bill was over, a new Pledges Law was passed which introduced this very revolutionary notion of registration as a possible substitute for transfer of possession.

The Pledges Law, 1967, sec. 4, provides that:

In 1959, Israel's parliament, the Knesset, enacted a government-proposed Restrictive Trade Practices Law, without a dissenting vote. In urging passage, the Minister of Finance and members of the labour parties comprising the Government had declared that the Law would fulfil an important role in preventing injury to the economy and exploitation of the consumers, taking the place of pervasive governmental controls, and would make a “substantial contribution to competition, efficiency and to the viability of the country's economy”. The principal complaint of legislators outside the labour parties, particularly those associated with the business community, was that the Law did not go far enough in establishing a competitive environment, for “competition is as essential to us as air to breathe”.