A largely ceremonial president is elected by the Knesset (parliament) for one seven-year term. In June 2021, Isaac Herzog, formerly the head of the Labor Party, was elected to replace outgoing president Reuven Rivlin, receiving 87 out of 120 votes.

The prime minister must have the support of a majority in the Knesset. In 2014, in a bid to create more stable governing coalitions, the electoral threshold for parties to win representation was raised from 2 percent to 3.25 percent, and the no-confidence procedure was revised so that opponents hoping to oust a sitting government must simultaneously vote in a new one. Despite this change, there are still many small parties in the political system, making it difficult to form majorities.

After the March 2021 elections, parties from across the political spectrum formed a new coalition government, ending the premiership of Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been in office since 2009. According to the coalition agreement, Naftali Bennett of the right-wing Yamina Party would serve as prime minister for about two years, after which Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party would replace him until the next elections.

Members of the 120-seat Knesset are elected to serve four-year terms through closed-list proportional representation using a single nationwide district, and elections are typically free and fair.

In the March 2021 elections, Likud won 30 seats, followed by Yesh Atid with 17. The rest of the parties captured fewer than 10 seats each: the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties with 9 and 7, respectively; the centrist Blue and White with 8; the center-left Labor and the right-wing Yamina and Yisrael Beitenu with 7 each; Religious Zionist, the Arab-led Joint List, the center-right New Hope, and the left-wing Meretz with 6 each; and the Arab Islamist party Ra’am with 4 seats.

The fairness and integrity of elections are guaranteed by the Central Elections Committee (CEC), which is composed of delegations representing the various political groups in the Knesset, supported by a professional staff, and chaired by a Supreme Court judge. Elections are generally conducted in a peaceful and orderly manner, and all parties usually accept the results. Some Netanyahu allies made baseless claims of election fraud in 2021, and Netanyahu himself argued that the formation of the new coalition government amounted to fraud because it allegedly broke campaign promises and left the largest single party in opposition. However, the conduct of the elections, even amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, was generally perceived as fair and successful.

Israel hosts a diverse and competitive multiparty system. However, parties or candidates that deny Israel’s Jewish character, oppose democracy, or incite racism are prohibited. These rules have occasionally been invoked against both far-right Jewish candidates and Arab candidates. The only such case to reach the Supreme Court ahead of the 2021 elections concerned an Arab candidate from the Labor Party, Ibtisam Mara’ana-Menuhin; the court voted 8–1 to uphold her candidacy in February.

Under a 2016 law, the Knesset can remove any sitting members who incite racism or support armed struggle against the state of Israel with a three-quarters majority vote; critics allege that the law is aimed at silencing Arab representatives.

Israel has undergone multiple, peaceful rotations of power among rival political groups during its history, and the 2021 elections resulted in the replacement of the long-serving incumbent prime minister. Opposition parties have typically controlled many local governments, and Arab-majority towns are often run by independents or mayors from the Joint List.

Israeli voters are generally free from coercion or undue influence by interest groups outside the political sphere. Political parties rely mostly on public subsidies for their financing. A 2017 law imposes funding restrictions on organizations that are not political parties but seek to influence elections. While it was aimed at limiting political interference by outside groups, critics of the law said its provisions could affect civil society activism surrounding elections and infringe on freedoms of association and expression. As of 2021, however, there was little evidence that the law was being actively enforced.

Political power in Israel is held disproportionately by Jewish men; while Ashkenazim (Jews of European descent) have historically enjoyed particular advantages, Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern descent) have gained representation in recent decades.

Women generally enjoy full political rights in law and in practice, though they remain somewhat underrepresented in leadership positions and can encounter additional obstacles in parties and communities—both Jewish and Arab—that are associated with religious or cultural conservatism. Shas and United Torah Judaism continued to exclude women from their candidate lists in 2021, while Ra’am elected its first woman Knesset member in 2020.

In 2018, the Knesset adopted a new “basic law” known as the nation-state law, which introduced the principle that the right to exercise self-determination in the State of Israel belongs uniquely to the Jewish people, among other discriminatory provisions. The basic laws of Israel are considered equivalent to a constitution, and critics of the nation-state law said it created a framework for the erosion of non-Jewish citizens’ political and civil rights, though any such effects have been limited to date.

Arab citizens of Israel, who often identify as Palestinian, already faced some discrimination in practice, both legal and informal. Until 2021, no Arab party had ever been formally included in a governing coalition, and Arabs generally do not serve in senior positions in government. While Ra’am did join the governing coalition after the March elections, its members were not included in the cabinet. Members of other ethnic and religious minority populations, as well as LGBT+ Israelis, enjoy some representation in the Knesset and the political system more broadly.

The roughly 650,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are Israeli citizens and can participate in Israeli elections. Arab residents of East Jerusalem have the option of obtaining Israeli citizenship, though most decline for political reasons. While these noncitizens are entitled to vote in municipal as well as Palestinian Authority (PA) elections, most have traditionally boycotted Israeli municipal balloting, and Israel has restricted PA election activity in the city. A Palestinian Jerusalem resident who is not a citizen cannot become mayor under current Israeli law. Israeli law strips noncitizens of their Jerusalem residency if they are away for extended periods, and a law adopted in 2018 empowers the interior minister to revoke such residency for those deemed to be involved in terrorism or treason-related offenses. Citizenship and residency status are denied to Palestinian residents of the West Bank or Gaza Strip who are married to Israeli citizens.

Courts can revoke the citizenship of any Israeli convicted of spying, treason, or aiding the enemy. Separately, it was reported during 2017 that the Interior Ministry had revoked the citizenship of dozens and possibly thousands of Bedouins over several years, citing decades-old registration errors. Lawmakers have since raised questions about the legality of this ongoing practice.

Jewish immigrants and their immediate families are granted Israeli citizenship and residence rights. Other immigrants must apply for these rights, and it is extremely difficult in practice for non-Jewish migrant workers and asylum seekers to obtain citizenship.

The government and parliament are free to set and implement policies and laws without undue interference from unelected entities.

In 2019, the failure of two successive elections to yield a governing majority meant that the country lacked a fully empowered government for the entire year, with the incumbents remaining in place in a caretaker capacity. The instability continued in 2020, as the government formed in the wake of elections that March collapsed after about seven months in office, necessitating the fourth round of balloting in just two years. However, the new coalition government that took office in June 2021 remained in place through the end of the year, and in November it won passage of the first budget bill since 2018.

Score Change: The score improved from 3 to 4 because the governing coalition that took power after the March elections was subsequently able to function and pass key legislation, ending a lengthy period of political instability.

High-level corruption investigations are relatively frequent, with senior officials implicated in several scandals and criminal cases in recent years. In 2019, Netanyahu was indicted on separate charges of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust; police had recommended the charges in 2018 after conducting three investigations into his alleged acceptance of expensive gifts, his apparent attempt to collude with the owner of the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth to secure positive coverage, and the granting of regulatory favors to telecommunications operator and media conglomerate Bezeq in return for positive coverage. Netanyahu denied the charges against him and accused law enforcement bodies of perpetrating “an attempted coup.” He refused to step down as prime minister after the indictment and continued to hold office through the first half of 2021, after which he became leader of the opposition. He also pursued legislative approval of an immunity bill that would shield him and other lawmakers from prosecution while in office, though the measure had not passed at year’s end. Opening arguments in Netanyahu’s trial were held in April 2021, and witness testimony continued through December.

Also during 2021, prosecutors filed indictments against several people in a long-running bribery case related to the purchase of naval vessels, though no charges were filed against two high-profile suspects—Netanyahu’s former personal attorney and a former navy commander. The new government was considering the formation of a commission of inquiry to further investigate the affair.

Israel’s laws, political practices, civil society groups, and independent media generally ensure a substantial level of governmental transparency, though recent corruption cases have illustrated persistent shortcomings. The Freedom of Information Law grants every citizen and resident of Israel the right to receive information from a public authority. However, the law includes blanket exemptions that allow officials to withhold information on the armed forces, intelligence services, the Atomic Energy Agency, and the prison system, potentially enabling the concealment of abuses.

The Israeli media sector as a whole is vibrant and free to criticize government policy. While the scope of permissible reporting is generally broad, print articles on security matters are subject to a military censor. According to official statistics released in 2021, the military in 2020 partially redacted a total of 1,403 news items and fully barred publication of 116 others, out of 6,421 stories submitted for review; the figures represented a 10-year low. The Government Press Office has occasionally withheld press cards from journalists to restrict them from entering Israel, citing security considerations.

A 2017 law allows police and prosecutors to obtain court orders that require the blocking of websites found to publish criminal or offensive content. Freedom of expression advocates warned that the measure could permit the suppression of legitimate speech.

While Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, freedom of religion is largely respected. Christian, Muslim, Druze, and Baha’i communities have jurisdiction over their own members in matters of marriage, divorce, and burial. The Orthodox establishment governs personal status matters among Jews, drawing objections from many non-Orthodox and secular Israelis. Most ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim, have been excused from compulsory military service under a decades-old exemption for those engaged in full-time Torah study. The Supreme Court, having struck down the existing exemption law as unconstitutional in 2017, has called for the Knesset to adopt new guidelines or begin enforcing normal conscription rules, repeatedly extending deadlines for it to do so. Legislation intended to reach a compromise on the issue was under consideration during 2021.

Although the law protects the religious sites of non-Jewish groups, they face discrimination in the allocation of state resources as well as persistent cases of vandalism or harassment, which usually go unsolved.

Citing security concerns, Israeli authorities have set varying limits on access to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in East Jerusalem in recent years, affecting worshippers across the broader area. In 2021, it was reported that Israeli authorities had increasingly allowed Jewish prayer at the site without openly announcing a change in policy. At the Western Wall of the compound, long a site of Jewish prayer, rival advocacy groups have been engaged in an ongoing dispute over access for women and non-Orthodox Jewish worshippers.

Primary and secondary education is universal, though divided into multiple public school systems (state, state-religious, independent religious, and Arabic) as well as private schools. School quality and resources are generally lower in mostly non-Jewish communities. A 2018 law bans groups that are in favor of legal action abroad against Israeli soldiers, or that otherwise undermine state educational goals by criticizing the military, from entering Israeli schools or interacting with students.

Israel’s universities have long been centers for dissent and are open to all students, though security-related restrictions on movement limit access for West Bank and Gaza residents in practice. Any attempts to influence or restrict academic freedom at universities are generally blocked.

While private discussion in Israel is generally open and free, there are some restrictions on political expression. For example, the 2011 Boycott Law exposes Israeli individuals and groups to civil lawsuits if they advocate an economic, cultural, or academic boycott of the state of Israel or West Bank settlements.

Protests and demonstrations are widely permitted and typically peaceful. However, some protest activities—such as desecration of the flag of Israel or a friendly country—can draw serious criminal penalties, and police have sometimes attempted to restrict peaceful demonstrations. Protest activity continued throughout 2020 despite varying pandemic-related rules on social distancing. For several weeks during the year, the authorities prohibited individuals from participating in protests more than a kilometer from their homes.

In May 2021, the possible eviction of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem sparked widespread protests, excessive police violence, and intercommunal clashes involving Arab and Jewish civilians in mixed towns within Israel. The unrest included destruction of property and vigilante attacks against unarmed residents. More than 2,000 people were arrested; while some Jews were among those detained, the vast majority were Arabs, suggesting likely police discrimination. Police were also accused of failing to protect Arab civilians from Jewish extremists.

Score Change: The score declined from 3 to 2 because a wave of protests in May were marred by excessive use of force by police, intercommunal mob violence, and incidents of vigilantism.

The environment for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has deteriorated in recent years. A law that took effect in 2012 requires NGOs to submit financial reports four times a year on support received from foreign government sources. Under a 2016 law, NGOs that receive more than half of their funding from foreign governments must disclose this fact publicly and in any written or oral communications with elected officials. The measure mainly affects groups associated with the political left that oppose Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians; foreign funding for right-leaning groups that support Jewish settlements in the West Bank, for example, more often comes from private sources.

A 2017 law bars access to the country for any foreign individuals or groups that publicly support a boycott of Israel or its West Bank settlements. The measure was criticized by civil society organizations as an obstacle to the activities of many pro-Palestinian and human rights groups. In 2019, the Supreme Court upheld a deportation order that authorities had issued the previous year against Human Rights Watch’s regional director, Omar Shakir, in part because the organization had called on businesses to stop operating in West Bank settlements to avoid complicity in human rights abuses.

In October 2021, Israeli authorities designated six civil society organizations that work in the West Bank as terrorist organizations. The government provided little evidence that the groups, some of which received funding from European governments, had links to militant activity, and the move was criticized by international human rights organizations and UN experts as an attack on the broader Palestinian human rights movement.

Workers may join unions and have the right to strike and bargain collectively. Most of the workforce either belongs to Histadrut, the national labor federation, or is covered by its social programs and bargaining agreements. Histadrut also competes with independent union organizations.

The judiciary is independent and regularly rules against the government. The Supreme Court has historically played a crucial role in protecting minority groups and overturning decisions by the government and the parliament when they threaten human rights. The court hears direct petitions from citizens and other individuals in Israel as well as Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the state generally adheres to court rulings.

Some right-wing politicians have advocated reforms that would allow the Knesset to override the Supreme Court when it strikes down legislation. However, lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected such a bill in 2020.

Although due process is largely guaranteed in ordinary cases, those suspected of security-related offenses are subject to special legal provisions. Individuals can be held in administrative detention without trial for renewable six-month terms. According to human rights groups, there were more than 4,000 Palestinians from the occupied territories held in Israeli facilities on security grounds as of October 2021, including nearly 500 in administrative detention. Under criminal law, individuals suspected of security offenses can be held for up to 96 hours without judicial review under certain circumstances, and be denied access to an attorney for up to 21 days.

Scores of Palestinian children (aged 12–17) from the occupied territories are held in Israeli military detention. Although Israeli law prohibits the detention of children younger than 12, some are occasionally held. Most Palestinian child detainees are serving sentences—handed down by a special military court for minors created in 2009—for throwing stones or other projectiles at Israeli troops in the West Bank; acquittals on such charges are very rare, and the military courts have been criticized for a lack of due process protections. East Jerusalem Palestinian minors are tried in Israeli civilian juvenile courts.

Israeli border communities receive occasional rocket and artillery fire from militant groups in the Gaza Strip, and more rarely from Lebanon and Syria. In May 2021, a spike in rocket attacks from Gaza in conjunction with the Sheikh Jarrah protests killed about a dozen Israeli civilians, prompting more deadly Israeli air strikes in return. Israeli security forces and civilians also face the ongoing threat of small-scale terrorist attacks, most often involving stabbings or vehicular assaults. Human rights groups have sometimes accused police of using deadly force against stone throwers or perpetrators of stabbing and vehicular attacks when they did not pose a lethal threat.

A record 126 murders were recorded in Arab communities in Israel in 2021, surpassing a previous record set in 2020. Arabs account for the vast majority of murder victims each year despite representing about a fifth of the population, and police are far less likely to solve murders with Arab as opposed to Jewish victims. As part of a coordinated government response to the problem, the November 2021 budget legislation included new spending on socioeconomic development and law enforcement in Arab communities, and the domestic intelligence service was deployed to help combat criminal activity, drawing mixed reactions from Arab politicians and activists.

The Supreme Court banned torture in a 1999 ruling, but said physical coercion might be permissible during interrogations in cases involving an imminent threat. Human rights organizations accuse the authorities of continuing to use some forms of physical abuse and other measures such as isolation, sleep deprivation, psychological threats and pressure, painful binding, and humiliation.

Jewish citizens of Israel, particularly those of Ashkenazi descent, typically enjoy practical advantages relative to the rest of the population on matters including legal treatment and socioeconomic conditions.

Arab or Palestinian citizens of Israel face de facto discrimination in education, social services, personal security, and access to housing and related permits. Aside from men who belong to the Druze minority, they are exempted from military conscription, though they may volunteer. Those who do not serve are ineligible for the associated benefits, including scholarships and housing loans. The 2018 nation-state law downgraded Arabic from an official language of the country to a language with “special status,” while another clause said the change would not “affect the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into force,” suggesting that it would be a largely symbolic demotion. In 2019, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a report that found a significant and growing gap between the abilities of Hebrew-speaking students and those of their Arabic-speaking peers in Israeli schools.

The 2018 nation-state law also declared that the state “views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value, and shall act to encourage and promote its establishment and strengthening.” The Jewish National Fund (JNF-KKL), which owns about 13 percent of the land in Israel, has effectively maintained a Jewish-only land-leasing policy thanks to a land-swap arrangement with the Israel Land Authority, which grants the JNF-KKL replacement property whenever an Arab bidder obtains a parcel of its land.

Many of Israel’s Bedouin citizens live in towns and villages that are not recognized by the state. Those in unrecognized villages cannot claim social services, are in some cases off the electricity grid, and have no official land rights, and the government routinely demolishes their unlicensed structures.

Israelis of Ethiopian origin suffer from discrimination—including in the criminal justice system—and lag behind the general population economically despite government integration efforts.

Women are treated equally in criminal and civil courts and have achieved substantial parity within Israeli society, though economic and other forms of discrimination persist, particularly among Arab and religious Jewish communities. Arab women are far less likely to be employed than either Arab men or Jewish women.

Discrimination based on sexual orientation is illegal, though LGBT+ people continue to face bias in some communities. Gay and transgender Israelis are permitted to serve openly in the military.

Individuals who enter the country irregularly, including asylum seekers, can be detained for up to a year without charges. Asylum applications, when fully processed, are nearly always rejected. In recent years the authorities have pressured thousands of African migrants and asylum seekers who entered the country irregularly—mostly from Eritrea and Sudan—to agree to be repatriated or deported to a third country, such as Rwanda or Uganda. There have been few new irregular entries since a barrier along the border with Egypt was completed in 2013, though there were more than 30,000 asylum seekers in the country as of 2021.

Security measures can sometimes present obstacles to freedom of movement, though military checkpoints are restricted to the West Bank. Informal local rules that prevent driving on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays can also hamper free movement. Some movement restrictions have been imposed for public health purposes during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they were generally limited in duration and grounded in genuine epidemiological concerns.

Property rights within Israel are effectively protected, and business activity is generally free of undue interference. Businesses face a low risk of expropriation or criminal activity, and corruption is not a major obstacle for private investors. However, the authorities’ general commitment to property rights has been called into question given their handling of unrecognized Bedouin villages and their settlement policies in the occupied territories.

Personal social freedoms are generally guaranteed. However, since religious courts oversee personal status issues, women face some disadvantages in divorce and other matters. Many ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities attempt to enforce unofficial rules on gender separation and personal attire. Marriages between Jews and non-Jews are not recognized by the state unless conducted abroad, nor are marriages involving a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man. Israel recognizes same-sex marriages conducted abroad. Nonbiological parents in same-sex partnerships are eligible for guardianship rights. A 2018 law extended surrogacy rights to women without a male partner but not to men without a female partner, effectively excluding gay men.

Israel remains a destination for human-trafficking victims, and African migrants and asylum seekers residing in the country are especially vulnerable to forced labor and sex trafficking. The government works actively to combat trafficking and protect victims. Israel’s legal foreign workers are formally protected from exploitation by employers, but these guarantees are poorly enforced. A smaller number of foreigners work in the country illegally. Histadrut has opened membership to foreign workers and called on employers to grant them equal rights. Discrimination against and exploitation of Palestinians from the occupied territories working in Israel remains commonplace.