As Knesset summer session winds down, lawmakers rush to pass last-minute bills
Ahead of three-month recess beginning next week, lawmakers vote in favor of bills on everything from establishing canine DNA databases to cutting benefits for terror convicts
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Members of the Knesset rushed to pass as many bills as possible during a marathon plenum session on Tuesday, ahead of the beginning of the fall recess early next week, after which most parliamentary activity will be put on hold until October 27.
Over the course of the day, lawmakers voted in favor of 18 pieces of legislation, 10 in their first reading and eight in their third reading. Bills must pass three votes, known as readings, to pass into law.
Among the bills approved before the end of the summer legislative session were measures to establish a national vaccination database (first reading), allow local authorities to create genetic databases for dogs (final reading), and extend the statute of limitations for a civil lawsuit under the Equal Employment Opportunity Law from three to five years (final reading).
The Knesset also passed into law a bill expanding the protections afforded to minors testifying in civil trials regarding sexual or violent offenses to march those provided in criminal trials and advanced another in its first reading which would grant the parents of premature babies up to 23 days off of work while their children are in the hospital.
In addition, lawmakers advanced several bills intended to cut state benefits to those implicated in terrorist activity. These include the first readings of legislation to revise the National Insurance Law to cut child allowances paid to parents of minors imprisoned for security or stone-throwing offenses and revoke National Insurance Institute benefits paid to anyone living abroad who “has been convicted of an offense pronounced by the court to be an act of terrorism.”
According to the explanatory notes for the bill, which passed its first reading 23-7, “In the course of the Swords of Iron war [in Gaza], it became apparent that there are also benefits paid to residents of the Gaza Strip who were involved in terrorist activity.”
Additional bills allocate refugees, soldiers, hostages and their families priority eligibility for housing in student dormitories (third reading); allow self-employed reservists to retroactively deposit money in their pension funds for the time they spent mobilized in 2023 (final reading); and give small and medium-sized reservist-owned businesses priority in government tenders (first reading).
Tuesday’s plenum votes came on the heels of a similar session on Monday, in which lawmakers advanced multiple bills, including three aimed at shutting down the United Nations’ Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, which passed their first reading.
The first bill, which would ban the organization from operating on Israeli territory, passed 58-9, while the second, aimed at stripping UNRWA personnel of the legal immunities and privileges afforded to United Nations staff in Israel, was approved 63-9.
The third, which would brand UNRWA — short for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East — a terrorist organization and require Israel to cut ties with it, passed 50-10 in the Knesset plenum.
All three bills will now be returned to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee for preparation for the second and third readings necessary for the legislation to become law.
Another piece of legislation passed in its final reading on Monday was the Posthumous Access to Digital Content Bill, which allows consumers to designate “family members or other close individuals” to access accounts “held by providers of digital content services” after his or her death.
Opposition parties, along with relatives of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, have objected to the Knesset’s upcoming three-month recess, slated to begin on Monday and to run until October 27.
“Going on a three-month recess at this time — while 120 hostages are still in the hands of Hamas, thousands are still displaced from their homes, and thousands of men and women of the security forces are being called to serve and are forced to leave their homes, their families and their workplaces — harms government oversight during wartime, as well going against the public interest,” the National Unity party said in a statement earlier this month.
At a Knesset House Committee meeting on July 2, lawmakers decided that parliamentary committees will be allowed to hold up to seven meetings during the break, while the Education, Culture and Sports Committee will be allowed to hold up to eight meetings ahead of the opening of the new school year on September 1.
The number of discussions in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee will not be limited given the ongoing war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel that left 1,200 dead and saw 251 taken hostage.
The committee is currently debating an ultra-Orthodox draft law that Haredi lawmakers see as their only chance of heading off full-scale mobilization of yeshiva students.
That bill would set the age of exemption for yeshiva students at 21 while “very slowly” increasing the rate of ultra-Orthodox conscription.
Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers have long presented the forcible enlistment of yeshiva students as a red line that would endanger the already tenuous stability of their alliance with Netanyahu, who is dependent on their support to maintain his thin majority in the Knesset.
Speaking with The Times of Israel last month, a spokesman for the United Torah Judaism chairman, Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, said that if the bill passes then he believes “everything will be okay.”
