How Israel is governed: fourteen Basic Laws in place of a constitution

Why the Knesset never wrote a constitution

The Constituent Assembly and the First Knesset could not agree on a constitution. In 1950 the Knesset adopted the Harari proposal instead: the Knesset would legislate a series of Basic Laws, one subject at a time, which together, with an introduction and general provisions, would eventually make up the constitution. The first, Basic Law: the Knesset, passed on 12 February 1958. The Knesset's own account of the project still describes it in the future tense.

Britannica calls the Basic Laws a political compromise adopted in place of a constitution. They are passed in the same way as other legislation, and a few of their clauses are entrenched by a special majority. Article 4 of the Knesset law, which requires general, national, direct, equal, secret and proportional elections, can be amended only by 61 of the 120 members, and the Knesset may extend its own term only by a law passed by 80 members.

The two laws of 1992 changed the system. Human Dignity and Liberty protects life, liberty, privacy and the right to leave and enter the country, and anchors those rights in the values of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. On 24 September 1997 the High Court of Justice, sitting with 11 judges, struck down provisions of a law on investment advisers for violating Freedom of Occupation, and on 14 October 1999 it voided a clause of the Military Justice Law that let military police hold a soldier for four days without a judge. The period is known as the constitutional revolution; the Knesset's own page notes that the question of whether Basic Laws outrank ordinary ones "hasn't yet been given in any law".

The later laws define the state's character more than its machinery. Basic Law: Israel, the Nation State of the Jewish People, passed on 19 July 2018, calls the Land of Israel the historical homeland of the Jewish people and reserves the right to national self-determination in Israel to them. It makes Hebrew the official language, gives Arabic an undefined special status and describes the development of Jewish settlement as a national interest the government may act to advance. The UN Human Rights Council and the Israeli rights group Adalah have pointed out that Human Dignity and Liberty, the rights law of 1992, contains no general provision for equality. The newest, Basic Law: Torah Study of 13 July 2026, declares the study of the Torah a basic value in the heritage of the Jewish people and of the state.

How a vote becomes a government

The Knesset has 120 members elected from a single national list by proportional representation, with a threshold of 3.25% of the vote. Every resident citizen may vote from the age of 18, and candidates must be at least 21. Elections are due every four years but come earlier whenever a coalition breaks or a no-confidence vote succeeds. A party may be barred from standing if its aims include the "negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people".

No party has ever won an absolute majority, so every government has been a coalition, and small parties can decide which large one governs. The prime minister is a member of the Knesset supported by a majority there, usually the leader of the largest party. Under Basic Law: the Government the government holds office by the confidence of the Knesset and is collectively responsible to it, and ministers need not be members. From 1996 the prime minister was elected directly, under the reform of 1992. The Knesset repealed direct election in 2001, and the post returned to whoever can hold a majority.

The system's volatility peaked between 2019 and 2022, when Israel held five Knesset elections in less than four years because no party could form a stable coalition. Before that, Mapai and the Alignment it dominated led every government from 1948 until the election of 1977, when Likud took power for the first time.

The president is head of state and is elected by the Knesset for a single term of seven years, a rule in force since 2000 that replaced a renewable five-year term. The office has no veto. It appoints judges, the governor of the Bank of Israel and the state comptroller, who is elected by the Knesset and answers only to it.

Who sits in the Knesset

The first Arab-led party was founded in 1988, and Arab-led parties held about 10% of seats as of 2022. After the threshold was raised in 2014, the Arab parties and the mixed Arab-Jewish Hadash ran together in 2015 as the Joint List. Settlers in the West Bank also vote and stand: after the 2015 election, 10 of the 120 members were settlers.

Israeli parties have traditionally fallen into Labour Zionist, Revisionist Zionist and religious Zionist camps, beside ultra-Orthodox parties whose rabbinic leaders carry considerable influence, Arab parties and parties of the secular left. According to Ilan Pappé, left and right in Israel are defined first by attitudes to the conflict and to the territories taken in 1967. Hebrew and Arabic are both used in Knesset proceedings.

What the judicial overhaul tried to change

On 4 January 2023 the incoming justice minister announced a plan to reshape the judiciary, published as a draft a week later. It had five parts: giving the government a majority on the committee that selects judges; limiting the Supreme Court's review of legislation and barring review of Basic Laws; allowing 61 members of the Knesset to override a ruling that struck down a law; making ministries' legal advisers political appointees whose advice would not bind; and ending review of government decisions on grounds of "reasonableness".

The government argued that unelected judges had taken too much control of public policy. Opponents argued that a court is the main check on a system with one chamber, no federal layer and a president without executive power. Protests and strikes followed, including reservists who said they would not report for duty, and religious Zionist rabbis and the political right held counter-demonstrations. On 27 March 2023 the government paused the plan; compromise talks collapsed in June.

On 24 July 2023 the Knesset passed the reasonableness amendment. On 12 September 2023 all 15 justices of the Supreme Court sat together for the first time to hear the challenge, and on 1 January 2024 they struck the amendment down by 8 to 7 and ruled 12 to 3 that the court may review Basic Laws. The Knesset passed a change to the make-up of the Judicial Selection Committee on 27 March 2025. Before that change the committee had nine members, three of them Supreme Court judges, and a Supreme Court appointment needed seven of the nine.

How courts and religion divide the law

The courts have three tiers. Magistrates' courts sit in most cities; district courts, in five of the six districts, hear appeals and serious cases at first instance; and the Supreme Court in Jerusalem is both the final court of appeal and, as the High Court of Justice, a court of first instance to which citizens and non-citizens alike can petition against the state. Israeli law draws on English common law, civil law and Jewish law, and on Ottoman and British legislation inherited from the mandate. Cases are decided by professional judges, chosen through the Judicial Selection Committee, appointed by the president and serving until mandatory retirement.

Marriage and divorce belong to the religious courts of each recognised community: Jewish, Muslim, Druze and Christian. Capital punishment exists only for genocide and for crimes committed during the Nazi period, and Adolf Eichmann, captured in Argentina in the early 1960s, remains the only person put to death after a conviction in an Israeli civilian court.

The state is divided into six districts, Central, Haifa, Jerusalem, Northern, Southern and Tel Aviv, and 15 sub-districts. Local government is made up of municipalities, local councils for smaller places and regional councils that group rural communities, all elected every five years and subject to the Ministry of the Interior for their budgets and by-laws. Israel administers the West Bank separately, as the Judea and Samaria Area, outside the six districts.

Where Israeli law stops

No Israeli law defines the state's borders, and Israeli law applies differently on each side of the 1949 lines. East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights have been incorporated under Israeli law, and their residents hold permanent residency with the option of applying for citizenship. The UN Security Council has declared both annexations null and void.

The West Bank, called the Judea and Samaria Area in Israeli usage, has not been annexed. Almost 400,000 Israeli settlers there are counted in Israel's population, vote for the Knesset and live largely under Israeli civil and criminal law, while Palestinians outside the settlements live under military rule or Palestinian Authority jurisdiction and cannot become Israeli citizens. Israel has refrained from annexation without giving up its claim to the land. Basic Law: Referendum of 2014 requires a referendum, unless 80 members vote otherwise, before any agreement that would end the application of Israeli law to territory where it now applies.

The Gaza Strip is a foreign territory under Israeli law. Israel withdrew its settlers and forces in 2005 and keeps control of the strip's airspace and waters, and with Egypt it operates a blockade of land, sea and air.

The international bodies that have ruled on the territories have reached different conclusions from Israel's government. The International Court of Justice called the land taken in 1967 occupied territory in an advisory opinion of 2004, and in an opinion of 2024 said the occupation violated international law and should end as quickly as possible. Security Council Resolution 2334 of 2016 called settlement activity a "flagrant violation" of international law. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli group B'Tselem describe Israel's rule over Palestinians as apartheid; the government of Israel and allies including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany have rejected that description.

Who Israel stands with and against

The United States and the Soviet Union recognised Israel almost simultaneously in May 1948. The United States describes Israel as its "most reliable partner in the Middle East". Under a memorandum of understanding signed in 2016, it provides about $3.8 billion a year from 2018 to 2028, around 20% of Israel's defence budget. Germany had paid 25 billion euros in reparations to Israel and to Holocaust survivors by 2007.

Israel holds diplomatic relations with 165 UN member states. Peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 were followed by the Abraham Accords of 2020, and six of the 22 members of the Arab League now have normal relations with it. Israel remains formally at war with Syria, uninterrupted since 1948, and with Lebanon, with which no border has been agreed by treaty. Iran withdrew its recognition of Israel during the Islamic Revolution. Israel joined the United Nations on 11 May 1949, the World Trade Organization in April 1995 and the OECD on 7 September 2010.

Most Israelis are conscripted at 18: men serve two years and eight months and women two years, then serve in the reserves. Arab citizens are exempt except the Druze, and so are men in full-time religious study, an exemption that has long been disputed. Israel has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and keeps a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nuclear capability.