Quick Answer: In Israel, refusing a reasonable adjustment for an employee with a disability is discrimination, not a declined favor. Section 8 of the Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities Law 5758-1998 covers hiring, pay, promotion, training, dismissal and severance, and the employer's only defense is that the accommodation would impose an undue burden (netel kaved midai) on the business. The Regional Labor Court can award up to NIS 50,000 without any proof of financial loss. These protections cover everyone working in Israel, including foreign nationals on a B/1 work permit.

Most disputes over disability at work do not start with anyone saying anything hostile. They start with a manager who genuinely thinks they are being kind. The employee asks to move to a ground-floor desk, or to start at 10:00 instead of 08:00, or for a screen reader that costs a few thousand shekels. The manager says they will look into it, nothing happens for four months, and then the role is quietly restructured.

Under Israeli law that sequence is a legal problem for the employer, and it is one they usually do not see coming until they receive the claim. The duty to accommodate is not a policy or a matter of goodwill. It sits inside the definition of discrimination itself.

1. Who Counts as a Person With a Disability

The Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities Law 5758-1998 (chok shivyon zchuyot le'anashim im mugbalut – חוק שוויון זכויות לאנשים עם מוגבלות) defines a person with a disability as someone with a physical, mental or cognitive impairment, permanent or temporary, whose functioning is substantially limited in one or more major areas of life.

Three parts of that definition catch employers out:

  • Temporary counts. An employee recovering from a serious road accident or a course of cancer treatment is protected while the limitation lasts. There is no minimum duration.
  • Mental and cognitive conditions count. The National Labor Court has treated psychiatric conditions, including post-traumatic stress, as disabilities under the Law. In a country where a large share of the workforce has served in the army or in the reserves, this matters more than it does elsewhere.
  • Perception counts. An employer who treats someone as impaired because of an assumption or a stereotype is exposed even if the medical picture turns out to be different.

You do not need a National Insurance Institute (Bituach Leumi) disability rating to rely on the Law. The test the Labor Court applies is functional. An NII decision is useful evidence and nothing more.

In Practice: The employer's duty is triggered by knowledge. In Tichtovet Brom v. Borachov (Labour Appeal 34784-10-16) the National Labor Court examined both who qualifies as disabled and when the employer is fixed with notice of it. Tell your manager or HR in writing, by email rather than in a corridor, and attach the medical documentation you are willing to share. Keep the sent copy. An employer who was never told cannot be blamed for failing to adapt, and in litigation that email is usually the first document the court asks for.

2. What Section 8 Actually Prohibits

Section 8 bars an employer from discriminating between employees, or between candidates, because of a disability, provided the person is qualified for the role. It reaches across the whole employment relationship: recruitment and screening, terms and pay, promotion, professional training, dismissal, severance pay and retirement benefits.

Two features make the section unusually sharp compared with disability laws elsewhere:

  • Failing to make an accommodation is itself treated as discrimination. The employee does not have to show any separate hostile act, comment or motive.
  • Once the employee establishes a factual basis, the burden of proof shifts to the employer under Section 9 of the Equal Employment Opportunities Law 5748-1988, which supplies the enforcement machinery. The employer must then prove that its conduct had nothing to do with the disability.

Israeli courts read the duty as an active one. As the National Labor Court has put it, an employer is expected to re-examine its accepted structures, procedures and practices rather than treat adjustments as a discretionary kindness extended to a particular worker.

3. What an Accommodation Actually Means

Section 8(e) describes accommodations (hatama'ot – התאמות) as adjustments to the workplace, to its equipment, to the requirements of the role, to working hours, to admission and screening tests, to training and guidance, and to work procedures. The list is illustrative, not closed.

What that looks like in an Israeli workplace:

  • Moving a workstation to the ground floor of a building whose lift does not reach every level, a common issue in older Tel Aviv and Jerusalem office stock
  • Shifting start and finish times so the commute avoids peak crowding on the train or on intercity buses
  • Hebrew-language screen reader software, magnification, or an adapted chair and desk
  • Exemption from night shifts, which interacts with the Hours of Work and Rest Law 5711-1951
  • Remote work days, restructuring which tasks sit in the job rather than replacing the whole job
  • Extra time or a different format in a recruitment test, which is where many claims by candidates begin

An accommodation does not mean creating a role that has no work in it, and it does not mean guaranteeing the salary the employee earned before an injury if the adapted role is genuinely different.

In Practice: In Kupolk (1949) Ltd v. Chananshvili (Labour Appeal 61235-02-17) the National Labor Court set out the framework for the accommodation duty and made clear that an employer must show honest efforts to identify what would work. A witness statement saying "we considered all the possibilities" carries almost no weight. Employers who win these cases can produce dated notes of a real conversation with the employee, and often an opinion from an occupational physician (rofe ta'asukati) or an accessibility professional. Employees should therefore put a specific request on the table, in writing, rather than a general complaint that the job has become hard.

4. The Undue Burden Test

The employer escapes only where the accommodation would impose an undue burden. The National Labor Court has refused to reduce this to a formula or a percentage of turnover. Instead it weighs:

  • Whether the cost is a one-off purchase or a recurring expense
  • The size of the business, its revenue and its profit cycle
  • How many employees hold the same role or work at the same site
  • Whether the employer is a public body or a private company, with more expected of public bodies
  • The employee's length of service, since more is expected for a long-serving worker
  • The effect on other employees
  • External or state funding available for the adjustment
  • What the employer has already spent on accommodations for this employee

The funding factor decides more cases than employers expect. Where the state will pay for the equipment, the argument that the equipment is unaffordable tends to collapse.

In Practice: Two public sources of money exist before an employer can plead cost. The Ministry of Labor runs periodic support programs (mivchanei tmichot) that reimburse employers for a substantial share of workplace adaptation costs, published as calls for applications with fixed submission windows. Separately, the rehabilitation department (agaf shikum) of the National Insurance Institute funds adaptive equipment, workplace assessment and vocational retraining for eligible Israeli residents. Apply, and keep the decision letter. An employer who never checked either route is in a weak position at the hearing, and an employee who applied and was approved has effectively answered the cost defense in advance.

5. Dismissal: The Search for Another Role Comes First

Where an employee can no longer perform the original job, Israeli law does not let the employer jump straight to termination. In Shmuel Vagman v. Galil Engineering Ltd (Labour Appeal 67949-09-16) the National Labor Court held that the employer must actively look for a suitable alternative position, search in a genuinely open-minded way rather than glancing at the current vacancy list, involve the employee so they can accept or refuse what is found, consider bringing in an external occupational adviser for a long-serving worker, and treat dismissal as a last resort.

All of this has to happen before and during the pre-dismissal hearing (shimua), not afterwards. A hearing that opens with a decision already taken is defective on ordinary Israeli labor law principles, and where a disability is involved it also supports a discrimination claim.

In Practice: Ask for the hearing invitation in writing with the reasons stated, request a few days to prepare, bring a representative or lawyer, and ask for the minutes (protokol) to be signed at the end. Send a follow-up email the same day recording anything the minutes missed, especially any accommodation you proposed and the answer you were given. That contemporaneous email is frequently the strongest document in the file. See our guide to the pre-dismissal hearing in Israel for the full procedure.

6. Representation Duties and the Adjusted Minimum Wage

Beyond the individual duty, Israeli law pushes employers toward proportional hiring. Section 9 of the Law requires an employer who sees that people with disabilities are not properly represented among its workforce to act to advance that representation, including by making accommodations.

Two concrete thresholds sit on top of that general duty:

  • An Extension Order in force since 2014 applies a 3% representation target to employers with 100 or more employees, together with a duty to appoint an officer responsible for the employment of people with disabilities.
  • Amendment 15 of 2016 raised the bar for public bodies employing 100 or more people, requiring representation of at least 5% of employees with significant disability.

The other rule worth knowing concerns pay. The statutory minimum wage in Israel is NIS 5,880 per month, or NIS 31.60 per hour. An employer may pay a person with a disability less than that only where the reduced capacity has been assessed under the Minimum Wage Regulations (Adjusted Wage for an Employee with a Disability with Reduced Work Capacity) 5762-2002, by a determiner appointed by the Ministry of Labor, and only at the percentage stated in the certificate.

In Practice: No certificate means no discount. An employer who decided informally that an employee "is only worth 70%" and paid NIS 4,116 instead of NIS 5,880 owes the difference, and the claim can reach back seven years under the general limitation period. On a two-year employment that gap alone is roughly NIS 42,000 before the additional compensation a court may award for discrimination. Employees should ask a simple question in writing: which determiner issued my certificate, and what percentage does it state?

7. How to Enforce Your Rights

There are three routes, and they are not mutually exclusive.

The Commission for Equal Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Netzivut Shivyon Zchuyot le'Anashim im Mugbalut) sits within the Ministry of Justice. It receives complaints, investigates, and can intervene in proceedings. Complaining costs nothing and does not stop you from suing.

The Regional Labor Court (Beit Din Ezori La'Avoda) hears the civil claim. Israel has regional labor courts in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Beer Sheva and Nazareth, with appeals to the National Labor Court in Jerusalem. Under Section 10 of the Equal Employment Opportunities Law 5748-1988 the court may award compensation without proof of financial loss, up to a ceiling of NIS 50,000, and may go above it where it gives reasons. That sits alongside ordinary damages for lost wages, unpaid severance and notice.

The Ministry of Labor's regulation and enforcement administration handles administrative enforcement and can impose financial sanctions on employers for breaches of protective labor legislation. This route punishes the employer but does not compensate you, so it works best in parallel with a claim.

In Practice: Speed changes what is available. If you want an injunction preventing the dismissal from taking effect, it has to be filed within days, before the position is filled and while the employment still exists. Money claims are generally subject to the seven-year limitation period under the Prescription Law 5718-1958, but a claim brought two years later reads very differently to a judge. Before you file, collect the payslips (tlushei maskoret), the written accommodation request, any refusal, the hearing invitation and minutes, and the medical documentation. Israeli labor litigation is document-driven, and the party with the paper usually wins the disputed conversation.

8. Where Foreign Nationals and Expats Stand

The Law applies to work performed in Israel. Your passport, your visa category and your employer's country of incorporation make no difference to whether Section 8 protects you. A Filipino caregiver on a B/1 permit, a French oleh on an A/5 visa and an Israeli citizen all have the same right to accommodations and the same access to the Regional Labor Court, in a system that hears claims in Hebrew but permits representation and translation.

Nationality does affect two things around the edges:

  • Benefits that depend on residency. The general disability pension from the National Insurance Institute is a residency-based benefit, so a non-resident foreign worker is generally outside it even though the employment protections apply in full. Cover for a workplace accident is different and applies from the first day of work regardless of nationality. Our guide to work injury claims in Israel explains that distinction.
  • Immigration status. A B/1 permit is tied to a specific employer, so a dismissal can put your right to remain at risk as well as your income. Before resigning or accepting a termination, check the transfer rules with the Population and Immigration Authority (PIBA), because the window to move to a new licensed employer is limited and varies by sector.

Foreign employees also tend to under-claim for a practical reason: they assume the process is inaccessible from abroad. It is not. A Regional Labor Court claim can be run by an Israeli attorney under a power of attorney after you have left the country, and hearings can often be attended remotely with the court's permission.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. The Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities Law 5758-1998 applies to work performed in Israel, whatever passport you hold and whatever visa you work under. A B/1 permit holder, an A/5 temporary resident and an Israeli citizen have identical rights to accommodations and identical access to the Regional Labor Court. Nationality affects only residency-based National Insurance benefits, not the employment protections themselves.
No. The definition in the Law is functional, not administrative: a physical, mental or cognitive impairment, permanent or temporary, that substantially limits functioning in a major area of life. The National Labor Court has applied it to temporary injuries and to psychiatric conditions including post-traumatic stress. A National Insurance Institute disability percentage is useful evidence, but no claimant needs one in order to sue.
Only an accommodation that imposes an undue burden, and the employer must prove it. Courts weigh whether the cost is one-off or recurring, the size and profitability of the business, the effect on other employees, and whether state funding exists. If the Ministry of Labor or the National Insurance Institute will subsidize the equipment, the argument that it is unaffordable rarely survives.
Not as a first step. In Vagman v. Galil Engineering (Labour Appeal 67949-09-16) the National Labor Court held that an employer must actively and creatively search for a suitable alternative position, involve the employee in that search, and treat dismissal as a last resort. Skipping that process before the pre-dismissal hearing is itself evidence of discrimination under Section 8.
Under Section 10 of the Equal Employment Opportunities Law 5748-1988 the Regional Labor Court may award compensation without proof of financial loss, up to NIS 50,000, and may exceed that ceiling with reasons. Awards run alongside ordinary damages for lost wages, severance and notice. The seven-year limitation period applies, but delay weakens the evidence and rules out any realistic request for reinstatement.