In other words, the requested state reserves the right to decide the competition at its discretion, and within the scope of its operation, it must consider all the relevant circumstances (in other words, all the connections). A similar rule of determination according to the totality of the circumstances is set forth in Article 14 of the Bilateral Extradition Treaty between the United States and Israel. On this, Prof. Feller said: "We have no doubt that the flexible approach adopted in the European Convention and other treaties that advocate the same approach is preferable to any rigid approach, whatever the test it has chosen" (Feller Extradition Law [125], at p. 405). I cannot, with all due respect, agree to this.
I will conclude by saying that insofar as a person's act, irrespective of the physical place in which it was committed, is particularly connected to the system of law of the requesting State, the specific purpose of the extradition laws in which we are now speaking requires that it be appropriate to extradite him to it. However, I will correct what I said: Locating the center of gravity of the offense is nothing more than a rule of preference that reveals which of the legal systems has a preferential connection to the act of the offense. It is not a decision at all, and its result only joins the other parameters that are examined in the question of extradition and which are formed together into a web of decision-making considerations.
Expressions of the Matter in the Contractual Law
- As already stated, countries are entitled to shape the extradition relations between them in the agreement, to narrow or expand their scope and to set various conditions therein. An examination of extradition agreements to which Israel is a party reveals that many of them include requirements relating to the geographical location in which the elements of the offense that constitute the grounds for extradition were developed.
Thus is Article 1 of the Agreement Regarding the Mutual Extradition of Offenders between the Government of Israel and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which establishes as a condition for extradition that the offence was committed in the territory of the requesting State. In the original language: