Quick Answer: Mediation in Israel is a voluntary, confidential process in which a neutral third party helps disputing parties reach their own agreement. Israeli courts can refer cases to mediation under Section 79C of the Courts Law 5744-1984, and private mediation is available through Ministry of Justice-accredited mediators and institutions such as the Israel Centre of Commercial Arbitration (ICCA). A signed mediation settlement is enforceable as a contract; if the dispute was court-referred, the settlement can be converted into a court judgment and enforced immediately through the Execution Office without new proceedings.

Foreign nationals and companies with disputes touching Israeli law face a practical problem: Israeli court proceedings run primarily in Hebrew, can take two to five years in commercial matters, and follow procedural rules that common-law practitioners find unfamiliar. Mediation offers a way around all three. Sessions run in whatever language the parties agree on, most commercial disputes settle in weeks rather than years, and the outcome is something the parties chose rather than something a judge imposed.

This guide explains how mediation operates under Israeli law, how court-referred mediation differs from purely private mediation, what a typical session costs, which disputes can and cannot be resolved through mediation, and how to convert a mediated agreement into something that can be enforced if the other side later walks away from it.

Israeli law does not have a single Mediation Act equivalent to the UNCITRAL Model Mediation Law. Instead, the framework is built from three interlocking sources: Section 79C of the Courts Law 5744-1984, which authorises courts to refer disputes to mediation with the parties' consent; the Court Regulations (Mediation) 5753-1993, which set out the procedural rules for court-referred mediation including confidentiality, mediator conduct, and the conversion of settlements; and a parallel scheme under Section 5 of the Courts (Family Affairs) Law 5755-1995, which makes mediation referral the default step before contested family court proceedings in many districts.

Private mediation — agreed by contract or initiated voluntarily outside a pending case — is governed by contract law rather than statute. The mediation agreement creates binding obligations on both parties to participate in good faith. Any settlement they reach is a contract enforceable under the Contracts (General Part) Law 5733-1973 and the Contracts (Remedies for Breach of Contract) Law 5731-1970.

Mediators operating in court-referred proceedings must hold accreditation from the Ministry of Justice (*Misrad HaMishpatim*). Accreditation requires completion of a certified training program of at least 60 hours, supervised practice sessions, and periodic renewal. The Ministry maintains a published register of accredited mediators searchable by specialty, language, and district. There is no equivalent statutory requirement for mediators operating in purely private processes, though institutional providers set their own standards.

In Practice: Choosing a Mediator with the Right Profile

For a commercial dispute between a foreign company and an Israeli counterpart, look for a mediator who is both Ministry-accredited and listed on the ICCA (Israel Centre of Commercial Arbitration) panel. ICCA-panel mediators work under institutional procedural rules that include a code of ethics and a defined confidentiality regime — protections that purely contractual mediation leaves to the parties to negotiate themselves. For a dispute with a value above NIS 2,000,000, request a mediator with sector expertise rather than a generalist: a former judge with a commercial background or a retired accountant-turned-mediator for financial disputes, for example. The ICCA panel lists mediators with English-language capability, which removes the need to translate every session.

2. Court-Referred Mediation vs. Private Mediation

The two routes produce very different outcomes when it comes to cost, speed, and what happens if the other side defaults on the settlement. The enforcement path is the one that matters most for foreign parties.

Court-referred mediation begins when a judge in pending litigation proposes mediation under Section 79C. The judge may make this proposal at any stage of proceedings, and both parties must consent before the referral takes effect. Once referred, the court file is stayed while the parties attend mediation. Mediation sessions do not form part of the court record and are privileged under Regulation 5 of the Court Regulations (Mediation) — nothing said in mediation can be used as evidence if the case later returns to court.

If mediation succeeds, the settlement is filed with the court. The court can then give it the status of a consent judgment (*pask din befishara*), which is immediately executable through the Execution Office (*Lishkat HaHotza'a LePo'al*) without further proceedings. If mediation fails, the judge who referred the case does not participate in the trial — a different judge is assigned to avoid any suggestion of bias from exposure to settlement discussions.

Private mediation proceeds independently of the courts. The parties select a mediator by agreement, pay directly, and set their own procedural rules. There is no court file, no automatic stay of other proceedings, and no mechanism for converting a settlement into a judgment unless the parties subsequently go to a court or notary to formalise the agreement. Private mediation is faster to initiate — sessions can begin within days of agreement — but the enforcement path is longer if the other side later defaults.

In Practice: When to Prefer Court-Referred vs. Private Mediation

Prefer court-referred mediation when: you have already filed a claim and want to avoid a multi-year trial; the other party has assets in Israel that you may need to seize quickly if they default; or you want the settlement to carry the immediate enforceability of a judgment. Prefer private mediation when: no court case has been filed yet and you want to avoid the cost of litigation entirely; the relationship is ongoing (a continuing contract or joint venture) and confidentiality matters more than speed; or the subject matter is sensitive enough that even the existence of a dispute being filed in court is commercially damaging. Family disputes — particularly those involving children and parenting arrangements — often combine both: a private mediation process followed by court approval of the outcome under the Family Affairs Law.

3. How the Mediation Process Works

Whether court-referred or private, mediation in Israel runs through the same basic sequence.

The process opens with a joint session where the mediator explains the rules, confirms confidentiality, and each party presents its view of the dispute without interruption. This session is often the most charged. It gives the mediator a read on the legal positions and, more usefully, on what each side actually cares about underneath those positions.

The mediator then moves between the parties in private "caucus" sessions (*plenim*). In caucus, each side can speak candidly about their priorities, their red lines, and the risks they face if the dispute goes to court. The mediator carries no binding proposals between rooms — the role is to reframe issues, test assumptions, and help each party assess their BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) realistically.

Most commercial disputes that settle do so in the third or fourth session, once the financial picture is on the table and both sides have thought through what litigation actually costs them. The mediator prepares a draft settlement agreement for the parties and their lawyers to review. Neither party signs anything until legal counsel has approved the final text.

Once signed, the agreement is a binding contract. In court-referred cases, counsel files it immediately and requests that the court convert it under Section 79C. The conversion hearing is typically brief — five to fifteen minutes — and the judge issues the consent judgment the same day if the terms are clear and not contrary to law or public policy.

In Practice: Preparing Your Disclosure Package Before Session One

Mediation in Israel moves fastest when both sides arrive at the first joint session with a disclosure package ready: financial statements or accounting reports relevant to the dispute, the key contract documents, any prior correspondence that defines the scope of the disagreement, and a one-page summary of your legal position and what resolution would look like. Experienced Israeli mediators — particularly those on the ICCA panel — review these materials before the session and use them to front-load the caucus efficiently. Parties who arrive with nothing prepared often use the first two sessions doing what they could have done in one, adding NIS 8,000–12,000 in mediator fees per session and extending the timeline by four to six weeks.

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4. Costs and Duration

Mediator fees in Israel are not fixed by statute for private mediation. Court-referred mediation fees are set under the Court Regulations (Mediation) and are divided equally between the parties unless they agree otherwise.

For court-referred mediation, the Ministry of Justice sets a fee schedule based on the dispute's monetary value. As a rough guide, mediation of a dispute worth up to NIS 200,000 costs approximately NIS 2,200–3,500 per party per session; disputes in the NIS 500,000–2,000,000 range cost approximately NIS 4,000–6,500 per party per session. The fee covers one mediator for a session of up to three hours; extended sessions are billed pro-rata.

Private commercial mediators — particularly those on the ICCA panel or affiliated with the Israeli Institute of Mediation and Conflict Resolution — typically charge NIS 800–2,500 per hour, depending on seniority and subject matter. A retired district court judge serving as mediator tends to sit at the top of that range. Sessions often run three to four hours, making a typical session cost NIS 2,400–10,000 split between the parties.

Duration varies by dispute type. A straightforward commercial debt dispute — clear facts, willing parties, no children or ongoing relationships involved — can settle in two sessions over three to five weeks. A business partnership dissolution or a contested property matter between co-owners typically takes four to eight sessions over two to four months. Family disputes involving child custody regularly extend to ten to fourteen sessions over four to eight months, because parenting arrangements require testing through short-term agreements before either side commits to longer-term terms.

In Practice: Comparing the Cost of Mediation with Litigation in the Tel Aviv District Court

A commercial claim of NIS 1,500,000 filed in the Tel Aviv District Court (*Beit Mishpat Hamehozi*) attracts a court filing fee of approximately NIS 19,500. Legal fees for full first-instance proceedings — filing, pleadings, multiple hearings, expert witnesses — typically run NIS 150,000–350,000 per side at current Tel Aviv commercial rates, and the case will not reach judgment for two to four years. Mediation of the same dispute — four sessions, ICCA-panel mediator — costs approximately NIS 30,000–50,000 in total fees per side and can produce a binding settlement in eight to twelve weeks. Even where mediation fails, the positions clarified during the process reduce litigation costs significantly. For foreign parties who would also need Israeli co-counsel plus their home-country lawyers for a cross-border trial, the savings are proportionally higher.

5. What Can Be Mediated Under Israeli Law

The vast majority of civil and commercial disputes are suitable for mediation in Israel. This includes:

  • Commercial contract disputes between businesses — supply agreements, distribution agreements, construction contracts, technology licensing
  • Real estate disputes — landlord-tenant conflicts, co-ownership partition disputes, boundary and building disagreements between neighbors
  • Corporate disputes — shareholder disagreements, company deadlocks, M&A warranty claims
  • Employment disputes between an employer and an individual employee (though many employment disputes can also go to the Labor Court, which has its own mediation track)
  • Family disputes — divorce, spousal support (*mezonot*), property division (*izun mishpat*), child custody, and parenting plans
  • Inheritance disputes — disagreements among heirs or between heirs and an estate administrator
  • Debt disputes — creditor-debtor negotiations outside formal Execution Office proceedings

Some matters cannot be resolved by mediation alone because they require a judicial decision to produce a legal status change. A Jewish divorce (*get*) requires a rabbinical court decision — no mediator can grant a *get*. A declaration of inheritance (*tzav yerusha*) must come from the Registrar of Inheritance or the Family Court — mediation can address how assets are divided but not who is legally an heir. Criminal matters, public law challenges, and proceedings that affect third parties not present at mediation also fall outside its reach.

In Practice: Combining Mediation with Parallel Court Steps in Family Cases

In a divorce proceeding before the Israeli Family Court, parties commonly run mediation in parallel with court proceedings rather than instead of them. Mediation covers the financial arrangements — property division, support, custody schedules — while the court retains jurisdiction over the *get* if required, the formal guardianship order, and any interim protective orders. The Family Court in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa has a specialist mediation referral unit (*yehidat gishor*) that provides an initial orientation session at a subsidized fee of approximately NIS 500 per couple. This session maps the issues, assesses suitability for mediation, and — if both parties agree — assigns an accredited family mediator from the Ministry of Justice register within ten to fifteen business days.

6. Enforcing the Settlement Agreement

A signed mediation settlement (*heskem gishor*) is a binding contract under Israeli law from the moment both parties sign. If one party subsequently refuses to comply, the other can sue for breach of contract in the competent court. That route works but takes time.

The preferred enforcement path — particularly for foreign parties who want certainty — is to convert the settlement into a court judgment at the point of signing. This requires that litigation is either pending or filed simultaneously. The process under Section 79C is:

  1. Both parties' lawyers draft the settlement in precise legal terms covering payment schedules, delivery obligations, penalties for default, and any continuing obligations.
  2. Counsel files a joint application to the court asking it to give the settlement judgment status (*ma'amad pask din*).
  3. The court reviews the settlement to ensure it is not contrary to law or public policy (a brief review, not a re-litigating of the merits).
  4. The court issues a consent judgment. From that point, any default can be enforced through the Execution Office under the Execution Law 5727-1967 — bank account garnishment, salary attachment, or registration of a lien on real property — within days rather than months.

Where no court case is pending — a common scenario when parties use private mediation to resolve a dispute before filing — the settlement remains a contract. To gain the benefit of judgment-level enforcement without starting new litigation, parties can take two alternative steps: they can present the settlement to a notary for notarization, which strengthens enforceability and the presumption of authenticity; or they can file a consent claim (*tove'a bihaskama*) — a joint application for a consent judgment — in the competent court, which typically takes two to four weeks to process and costs a reduced court filing fee.

In Practice: Drafting the Settlement to Make Enforcement Seamless

The settlement agreement must identify every obligation with precision: exact NIS amounts, payment dates, bank details for wire transfer, what triggers default, and the consequences of default. Ambiguity in one clause regularly produces a second dispute. Specify whether default interest applies and at what rate — the legal rate under the Late Payment Interest Law 5761-1997 is the fallback, but parties can agree a different rate in writing. Where the paying party is a foreign company, add a clause requiring it to maintain a representative or asset in Israel for enforcement purposes, or designate an Israeli guarantor. If the settlement converts into a court judgment, the Execution Office will act on its plain terms — every obligation needs to be unambiguous on the face of the document.

7. Cross-Border Disputes and Foreign Parties

Foreign parties using mediation in Israel run into two questions that domestic parties rarely think about: can the sessions be held in English, and will the settlement mean anything back home if the other side ignores it?

On language: Court Regulation 4 specifies that mediation sessions are conducted in any language the parties agree on. English-language sessions are common in international commercial disputes. Ministry of Justice-accredited mediators who work in English are identified in the register, and ICCA-panel mediators routinely conduct entire sessions in English. There is no requirement that the settlement agreement itself be in Hebrew, though a Hebrew translation is advisable before filing for court conversion.

On enforcement abroad: the United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation (the Singapore Convention) entered into force for Israel on 8 July 2025, following ratification on 8 January 2025 and Amendment No. 103 to the Courts Law. Israel filed a reservation under Article 8(1)(b), so the Convention covers a settlement only where the parties expressly agreed that it should. Include that opt-in clause and an internationally mediated commercial settlement can be enforced directly in other Convention states. Leave it out and the settlement is treated as an ordinary contract abroad. See our full guide to enforcing a mediation settlement agreement in Israel for the drafting mechanics.

Where the settlement is converted into an Israeli court judgment under Section 79C, recognition abroad depends on whether that country enforces Israeli court judgments. The EU, the UK, the United States (in most states through common-law comity), Canada, and Australia all have mechanisms for recognizing Israeli judgments. The foreign judgment recognition process takes additional time and cost, but it is substantially more reliable than attempting to enforce a bare contract across borders.

For large cross-border disputes — say, a NIS 5,000,000 claim between a foreign investor and an Israeli company — a hybrid structure often makes sense: begin with a mediation attempt, and if the parties are close to agreement, convert the outcome into a consent judgment immediately. This gives the foreign party both the speed of mediation and the enforceability of a court award in a single step. If mediation fails, the parties are already before the court and can move directly to an accelerated hearing or to an arbitration under the new International Commercial Arbitration Law 5784-2024.

In Practice: Adding a Mediation Clause Before Arbitration in a Cross-Border Contract

A tiered dispute resolution clause in an Israel-related commercial contract typically reads: (1) senior management negotiation for 20 days; (2) mediation before an ICCA-accredited mediator in Tel Aviv for 45 days; (3) if unresolved, arbitration under the ICCA rules with a sole arbitrator, seat in Tel Aviv, language English. This structure gives the parties two opportunities to avoid the cost of arbitration without eliminating the binding endpoint. The 45-day mediation window is long enough to be meaningful but short enough that neither party can use it to delay access to arbitration indefinitely. The ICCA administers both mediation and arbitration, so the institutional infrastructure — appointment procedures, fee schedules, hearing facilities — is the same organization throughout the process.

Frequently Asked Questions

Mediation itself is voluntary and non-binding until the parties sign a written settlement agreement. Once signed, that agreement is enforceable as a contract under Israeli law. If the mediation was court-referred under Section 79C of the Courts Law 1984, either party can ask the court to give the settlement the status of a court judgment, which can then be enforced through the Execution Office without starting new proceedings.

Yes. Israeli mediators routinely conduct sessions by video conference, and the Mediation Regulations do not require physical presence. Both Ministry of Justice-accredited mediators and private mediation centers such as the ICCA have adopted video mediation protocols. The parties must agree on the format at the outset; if one party insists on in-person attendance and the other cannot travel, the mediator can set a procedural timetable that accommodates remote participation.

If the mediation is purely private, a refusal to participate is a breach of the mediation clause in the contract, giving the aggrieved party grounds to claim damages or proceed directly to arbitration or litigation. If the mediation is court-referred under Section 79C, the court cannot compel attendance but can take the refusal into account when allocating legal costs at the end of the case. In family disputes, courts sometimes treat a refusal as a factor in interim custody or financial orders.

Commercial disputes between businesses usually resolve in two to four mediation sessions of three to four hours each, spread over four to ten weeks. Family disputes involving child custody typically take six to twelve sessions over three to six months. The timeline depends almost entirely on the parties' willingness to make concessions and on how quickly they exchange financial documents between sessions.

Recognition abroad depends on the receiving country's rules. An Israeli court judgment issued after converting a settlement under Section 79C may be recognizable in countries that enforce Israeli court judgments — the EU, UK, and most US states. The 2019 Singapore Convention entered into force for Israel on 8 July 2025, but Israel's Article 8(1)(b) reservation makes it opt-in, so the settlement must expressly say the Convention applies. Without that clause, a privately signed settlement is treated as a contract abroad.

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