IsraelLawYou signed a contract with an arbitration clause. A dispute came up, you invoked the clause, and now the other side has simply gone quiet. No response to the notice, no arbitrator nominated, no appearance at the first hearing. For a foreign company or an overseas investor, this is one of the most common and most frustrating situations in Israeli dispute resolution, and it usually comes with a nagging fear: does their silence mean I am stuck?
It does not. Israeli law was built for exactly this problem. A party cannot escape an arbitration agreement by pretending it does not exist, and an arbitrator has clear statutory power to press on and decide the case alone. This guide walks through how ex parte arbitration actually works in Israel: how you get a tribunal appointed when the other side won't cooperate, the one procedural step that makes or breaks the whole award, how you prove your case to an empty chair, and how you turn a default award into money in the bank.
1. Overview: What "Ex Parte" Really Means Here
"Ex parte" is Latin for "from one side." In the arbitration context it describes a proceeding that runs with only one party participating. It is worth separating this from two neighbouring problems that often get confused with it.
The first is compelling a reluctant party to arbitrate at all, usually because they filed a lawsuit in court in breach of the arbitration clause. That is dealt with by a stay of court proceedings and is a separate topic. The second is a party who never agreed to arbitration in the first place. Ex parte arbitration assumes something different: there is a valid arbitration agreement, the process has started, and one side is choosing not to engage.
In practice, non-participation comes in two flavours. Some respondents disappear from day one, ignoring the notice of arbitration entirely. Others take part at the start, then walk out mid-way, often once they realise the case is not going their way. Israeli law treats both the same. The arbitrator does not lose the power to decide simply because a party stops showing up.
In Practice: Silence from the other side is not consent to lose, but it is also not a free pass for you. If you are the party pushing for arbitration, section 5 of the Arbitration Law requires you to be, and to remain, "ready and willing" to do everything needed to run the arbitration. That means serving your notice through a documented channel (courier with proof of delivery, or the method the contract specifies), keeping every delivery receipt, and never being the one who causes delay. Build your paper trail from the first letter. Nine months later, when you ask the District Court to confirm the award, that trail is what proves the absent party was given every chance to appear.
2. Can the Arbitration Proceed Without the Other Party?
Yes, and the authority for it sits in the First Schedule to the Arbitration Law. Unless the parties agreed otherwise, the First Schedule supplies the default procedural rules for every Israeli arbitration, and paragraph 10 is the key one: the arbitrator will not hold a session in the absence of a party unless he has warned that party, in writing or orally, that he will proceed at that session in their absence.
Read that carefully, because it contains both the power and the condition. The power is real: the arbitrator may hold the hearing, take evidence, and decide the case with only one side present. The condition is the warning. Skip the warning and the whole award is exposed, a point covered in Section 4.
If your arbitration runs under an institution's rules rather than the bare statute, those rules usually contain their own version of the same principle. The Israeli Center for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA), for example, lets proceedings continue against a non-participating respondent, and any award binds that party as if they had appeared. Institutional rules and the First Schedule point in the same direction: a party who checks out cannot freeze the case.
3. Getting the Arbitrator Appointed When the Other Side Won't Cooperate
Before anyone can hold a hearing, there has to be an arbitrator. This is often where a non-cooperating party tries to jam the works. Where the clause calls for each side to nominate one arbitrator, the respondent simply never nominates. Where the clause names a single arbitrator to be agreed on, they refuse to agree.
The Arbitration Law closes this door. Under section 8, if a party fails to appoint an arbitrator, or the two sides cannot agree on a sole arbitrator within the time the agreement allows, the District Court will make the appointment for them on the application of the party who wants to move forward. The court can appoint the missing co-arbitrator, or a sole arbitrator, and the arbitration then proceeds on that footing. If your arbitration is administered by an institution, the institution appoints under its own rules and you may not need to go to court at all.
In Practice: A section 8 appointment application is filed at the District Court and typically resolves in about 6 to 10 weeks, faster if the respondent does not oppose it, which they frequently do not. Court fees for this kind of application are modest by litigation standards, in the region of NIS 1,100 to NIS 1,600 depending on the court's current fee schedule, plus your attorney's fees for drafting the motion. Bring the arbitration clause, proof you asked the other side to nominate, and proof they ignored you. Judges appoint routinely in these cases, because the alternative would let any respondent kill an arbitration clause by doing nothing.
4. The Warning That Makes the Whole Award Valid
If you take one thing from this guide, make it this. The single most common reason a default award gets thrown out later is not a problem with the merits. It is a defect in notice. Paragraph 10 of the First Schedule does not just suggest a warning as good manners; it makes the warning a precondition to holding a hearing in someone's absence.
So the arbitrator needs to do two things, and needs to be seen to have done them. First, give the absent party genuine notice of the hearing date, with enough lead time to actually attend. Second, tell that party, clearly and in a way that can be proven afterwards, that if they do not appear the hearing will go ahead and an award may be made against them. A short line buried in an email is weaker than a formal letter that spells it out.
Good arbitrators are careful here on their own initiative, but it is your interest that is on the line, so it pays to make sure the record is clean. Adjourning once and sending a second, unmistakable warning before proceeding costs you a few weeks and buys you a far more durable award.
In Practice: Give the absent party a real, documented runway. A common approach is to set the hearing at least 15 days out, send the paragraph 10 warning by a method that produces proof of delivery, and note in the file exactly when and how it was sent. If the respondent has an Israeli lawyer on record, copy the lawyer too. When you later apply to confirm the award, the District Court will look first at whether the absent party had a fair opportunity to be heard. This is the exact soft spot that section 24(4) targets, and a clean warning record is what takes it off the table.
5. You Still Have to Prove Your Case
Here is where many claimants misread the situation. An empty chair on the other side does not mean an easy win. Israeli arbitration does not treat non-appearance as an admission. The arbitrator still has to be satisfied, on the evidence you put in front of them, that your claim is made out. If your contract math is wrong or your documents do not support the sum you are asking for, a conscientious arbitrator will award less than you claimed, or nothing, even with no one there to argue against you.
The upside is that the arbitrator has a freer hand with procedure than a judge. Under paragraph 14 of the First Schedule, an arbitrator is not bound by the formal rules of evidence or civil procedure that apply in court. That makes it practical to prove a straightforward debt or breach through affidavits, the contract itself, invoices, correspondence, and a short hearing, without the full machinery of a trial. It does not lower the bar of persuasion; it just removes some of the ceremony.
What if a crucial document or witness sits with the absent party or a third party who won't hand it over? The arbitrator has no power to compel outsiders, but the court does. Under section 16 of the Arbitration Law, the District Court can lend its own coercive powers to the arbitration, including summoning a reluctant witness or ordering production of documents, so a non-cooperating opponent cannot bury the evidence you need.
In Practice: When the respondent won't pay, you also carry their share of the arbitrator's fee, at least for now. Israeli arbitrators commonly charge NIS 1,200 to NIS 3,500 per hour depending on seniority, or a fixed fee, and they usually ask for an advance deposit before the hearing. In a modest single-arbitrator case, expect to front something in the range of NIS 20,000 to NIS 60,000 to keep things moving. You are not simply eating that cost: ask the arbitrator to include the fees you advanced, plus your legal costs, in the award. Once the award is confirmed, those amounts are collectible from the other side through the Execution Office along with the principal.
6. The Default Award and Its Timeline
Once the evidence is in, the arbitrator writes the award. A default award looks the same as any other: it sets out the claim, the evidence relied on, the arbitrator's reasoning, and the sums awarded, including interest and costs. It is binding on both parties from the moment it is made, whether or not the losing side turned up.
On timing, the First Schedule sets a default clock. Under paragraph 15, the arbitrator is expected to make the award within three months from the day they began dealing with the dispute, and may extend that period by up to a further three months. If the case genuinely needs longer, the District Court can grant additional extensions under section 19. In practice, an uncontested case with one participating party often moves faster than a fully fought one, because there are no defence pleadings, no cross-examination, and no counterclaim to untangle.
In Practice: Watch the paragraph 15 clock, because a very late award is itself a ground a losing party can raise to attack the result. If the three-month period (plus the arbitrator's three-month extension) is running out and the award is not ready, have the arbitrator or your counsel apply to the District Court for a further extension under section 19 before the time expires, not after. A straightforward, well-evidenced default claim can realistically go from a constituted tribunal to a signed award in roughly 3 to 5 months. Ask the arbitrator to state interest under the Adjudication of Interest and Linkage Law 5721-1961 in the award, so the sum keeps growing until it is actually paid.
7. Confirming and Enforcing the Award
An arbitral award is not self-executing. On its own it is a private document. To collect on it, you convert it into something the state will enforce, and in Israel that means asking the District Court to confirm it.
Under section 23 of the Arbitration Law, the court confirms an award on the application of a party, and once confirmed the award has the force of a court judgment for enforcement purposes. This is usually a paper process. Because the other side never engaged, they often do not oppose confirmation either, though they still have the right to try (see Section 8 below). Once you hold a confirmed award, you open a file at the Execution and Collection Authority, known to everyone in Israel as the Execution Office (Hotzaa LaPoal). From there you get the full collection toolkit: freezing the debtor's bank accounts, placing liens on property, attaching wages, and, where justified, a stay-of-exit order to stop them leaving the country.
If your debtor's assets are outside Israel, a confirmed Israeli award travels well. As an arbitral award, it can be recognised and enforced in the 170-plus countries that are party to the New York Convention of 1958. The mirror image is also true: a foreign arbitral award, including a foreign default award, can be recognised in Israel under section 29A of the Arbitration Law, which brings the New York Convention into Israeli law.
In Practice: Move fast on enforcement, and move in the right order. A section 23 confirmation application carries a modest court fee, and an uncontested confirmation typically completes in about 2 to 4 months. Confirmation alone does not freeze anything; it turns your award into a judgment. The moment you have that judgment, open the Execution Office file (the opening fee runs at roughly 1.25% of the debt) and have your Israeli enforcement lawyer apply for account freezes and liens straight away. Foreign creditors lose real money by waiting months between award and enforcement, which gives a determined debtor time to move assets out of reach.
8. When the Absent Party Fights Back
Do not assume a silent respondent stays silent forever. The classic pattern is a party who ignores the whole arbitration, then surfaces the moment you try to enforce the award, arguing it should be set aside. Knowing where they will push helps you build an award that holds.
Section 24 of the Arbitration Law lists ten grounds on which a court may set aside an award. For a default award, the dangerous one is almost always ground (4): that a party was not given a proper opportunity to state their case or bring their evidence. This is precisely why the paragraph 10 warning and a clean notice trail matter so much. An absent party's best line is "I never had a fair chance to be heard," and a documented record of proper notice and warnings is what defeats it. Other grounds, such as the absence of a valid arbitration agreement or the arbitrator exceeding their authority, come up less often in the pure non-participation scenario.
Timing is a hard limit here, and it works in your favour. Under section 27, a party who wants to set an award aside must apply to the court within 45 days of receiving it. That window shrinks to just 15 days once you file your own application to confirm the award. Filing for confirmation promptly is therefore both offence and defence: it starts the enforcement machinery and forces any objection into a tight deadline the absent party has usually already blown.
In Practice: Use the section 27 clock. The 45-day set-aside window (cut to 15 days once you move to confirm under section 23) is one of the strongest reasons to apply for confirmation the moment the award lands, rather than sitting on it. A respondent who wakes up late and tries to challenge the award will often find the deadline gone. And because Israeli courts review arbitral awards narrowly, a set-aside application is not a rerun of the case on the merits; the losing party has to fit their complaint into one of the ten grounds in section 24, which a well-run ex parte proceeding gives them little room to do.