There is hardly any United Nations resolution which is quoted and referred to as often as 242. It has become the cornerstone for all stages in the settlement of the Arab-Israel conflict, as, for example, the Camp David Frameworks (1978) and the Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel (1979). In addition, it has been referred to by the conveners of the Madrid Conference (1991) as the basis for the negotiations which were started at that Conference and are going on as this article is being written.

According to the letter of invitation to the Madrid Conference, the parties are invited to achieve peace through direct negotiations along two tracks, between Israel and the Arab States, and between Israel and the Palestinians. The latter are to be part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. With respect to the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, they are to be conducted in phases, beginning with talks on interim self-government arrangements which should last five years.

More than thirty-two years have passed since Supreme Court Justice Agranat's ruling that, even in the absence of alternative means to effect a lawful arrest, deadly force may be employed only where the arrest is pursuant to the commission of a felony. That ruling, in the case of Gold v. The Attorney General, stands unchallenged to this day. At the time that decision was handed down, Israeli case law provided a dearth of analytic tools for critical review. Thus, Gold was incorporated into Israeli law pristine and unencumbered by the entourage of learned comments that now regularly escorts Supreme Court decisions. It is not my intention to tarnish that purity of Gold by disclosing some undetected flaw in the ruling. Rather, I believe it is time that we take that ruling a step further on the course it set.

The unanimous passage of the Income Tax Ordinance (Amendment No. 89) Law, 1992, by the Israeli Knesset fits in a series of amendments, which, during the last four decades, have gradually eroded the principle of aggregation of income of husband and wife introduced in 1941. It constitutes a further step towards a complete system of splitting the income of husband and wife for the purpose of calculating the amount of income tax; its primary purpose, however, is apparently to equalize the rights and duties of the married woman with those of the man as far as the procedural and administrative aspects of the assessment and collection of the tax on the wife's income is concerned.

The extension of the right to split the income of the married couple is fairly limited. The amendment for the first time entitles the married woman to opt for a separate computation of tax not only on her earned income but also on her income derived from property; provided, however, that such property was either owned by the wife at least a year before her marriage or acquired by her by way of inheritance. Thus, the tax burden on the married couple, which has basically remained the tax unit, has been alleviated to a limited extent only.