In addition, the Supreme Court's mandate is that such jurisdictional clauses be interpreted with precision. This is the rule established in Civil Appeal Authority 6493/21 Lagziel v. R.S. Design in a Tax Appeal (published in the Databases [Nevo]; 2022) (hereinafter: the Lagziel case). In a parenthetical article, I will note that both sides did not address it in a concrete way in their arguments.
Indeed, the interpretation of foreign jurisdiction terms is a complex task, since the question arises in accordance with what law should be interpreted - whether in accordance with the law of the contract (explicit or presumptuous), or perhaps in accordance with the law of the forum. This matter was not discussed in the case of Lagziel, and it seems that a clear rule has not yet been issued regarding it. However, in our case, the position of the English law on the issue was not properly established, and in fact, both sides devoted most of their efforts to recruiting the Israeli references that apply in the field. Against this background, the justification for deviating from Israeli law was not established as the interpretive basis for evaluating the stipulation in dispute. And here, as noted, the current approach gives precedence to a strict interpretation, according to which the stipulation will be considered unique only if a formula explicitly clarifies it.
A review of the agreement at hand reveals that there is an interpretive possibility that the defendant sought to ensure that if it files a lawsuit in the UK against any of its distributors, they will not be able to hear improper forum claims or deny the authority of the English forum. Still, this does not mean that the parties have agreed that only the foreign forum can be called upon to dispute between them. This exegetical possibility is also consistent with the understanding of conditioning as a parallel, and this is how it should be interpreted.
Second, the defendant did not establish that the Israeli forum was not appropriate to discuss the dispute. This is the termination of the engagement with a distributor in Israel, and there are substantial and significant connections that lead the dispute to the shores of the local forum.