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The Evolution of Dispute Settlement Provisions in Israel’s PTAs: Is There a Global Lesson?

In recent years, the number of regional and bilateral trade agreements (hereinafter preferential trade agreements (PTAs)) in the international arena has been growing steadily, amounting to some hundreds of agreements, according to World Trade Organization (WTO) data. These have developed alongside the WTO multilateral system, viewed as complementary to it in some aspects but as competing in other aspects. This article concentrates on one aspect or, rather, service offered by both systems: the dispute settlement mechanism. This article examines dispute settlement mechanisms offered by regional and bilateral free trade area agreements (FTAA) concluded by Israel in two past decades, presenting the evolutionary process these mechanisms have been through, inspired by the developments that occurred in the WTO dispute settlement mechanism at the end of the Uruguay Round. This article further analyses the differences refl ected in Israel’s agreements between the approaches of European trade partners and trade partners from the Americas. This article then draws a general lesson from this comparison as to the relationship between regional and multilateral dispute settlement mechanisms.