Quick Answer: An employer in Israel cannot lawfully dismiss a pregnant employee — or refuse to renew a fixed-term contract — without first obtaining written permission from the Commissioner for Equal Employment Opportunities at the Ministry of Economy and Industry. The prohibition stems from Section 9 of the Employment of Women Law 5714-1954 (Chok Avodah Nashim) and applies from the moment the employee completes 6 months of employment. Dismissal without permission is void by law, regardless of the stated reason. The same protection covers absences for fertility treatments (up to 150 days per calendar year under Section 9A) and continues for 60 days after the employee returns from maternity leave. Regional Labor Court compensation for a void dismissal typically runs from NIS 40,000 in statutory damages to 12 months of salary in lieu of reinstatement.

Most foreign nationals and expats working in Israel know that maternity leave exists. Fewer know that Israeli law goes far further: it effectively makes it impossible to dismiss a pregnant employee without government approval. The mechanism is unique — not a prohibition backed by fines after the fact, but a prior-permission requirement that stops the dismissal from happening in the first place. A dismissal without that permission is not merely unlawful; it is void from the moment it is given.

For an employee, the void-dismissal doctrine means there is no 30-day window to challenge a termination letter — the termination letter simply never had legal effect. For an employer, it means that even a restructuring, a performance exit, or the natural expiry of a fixed-term contract can be blocked by a government regulator, and triggering the wrong chain of events can result in awards exceeding a year's salary.

For foreign nationals — whether on a B/1 Expert permit, a temporary residency, or an employment contract initially drafted under foreign law — the rules apply in full. Israeli courts have consistently refused to allow foreign-law employment contracts to strip away the protections of the Employment of Women Law.

The core rule sits in Section 9 of the Employment of Women Law 5714-1954. The section prohibits an employer from giving notice of dismissal to a pregnant employee, actually dismissing her during the protected period, or taking any preparatory step toward dismissal — such as issuing a letter of intent or reducing her hours as a precursor — without the prior written permission of the Commissioner for Equal Employment Opportunities (Netziv Shiviyon Uva'ad B'Avoda) at the Ministry of Economy and Industry (Misrad HaKalkala VehaTeaot HaTaasiya).

The Commissioner is a statutory regulator, not a court. The Commissioner's office receives the employer's application, notifies the employee, hears written submissions and sometimes oral arguments from both sides, and issues a written decision. That decision can be appealed, but only to the Regional Labor Court — no administrative reconsideration shortcut exists.

The Employment of Women Law was enacted in 1954 and has been amended repeatedly. Today's version of Section 9 reflects a legislative intent that goes well beyond protecting the specific pregnancy: it was designed to prevent employers from using pregnancy as an occasion to exit from an employment relationship they might otherwise have maintained. The reversed burden of proof built into Section 9(e) follows from that design. Once an employee proves she was dismissed within the protected period and was pregnant at the time, the burden shifts: the employer must prove the dismissal had nothing to do with the pregnancy.

In Practice — The Void Dismissal Mechanism: A project coordinator at a Herzliya software company was handed a termination letter in her 4th month of pregnancy. Her employer stated the position was being made redundant due to a budget cut. She had been with the company for 14 months. The employer had not applied to the Commissioner. The employee filed an urgent application to the Regional Labor Court of Tel Aviv-Jaffa under Section 9 of the Employment of Women Law 5714-1954. The court issued an interim order within 5 days declaring the dismissal void and ordering the employer to treat her as continuously employed with full salary and benefits until a final decision. The employer conceded, withdrew the termination letter, and restored her position. Under Section 9(e), once the court confirmed she was pregnant at dismissal, the burden shifted to the employer to prove the redundancy had no connection to the pregnancy. The employer could not meet that burden on the facts.

2. Who Is Protected and When the Protection Applies

The Section 9 protection applies to any employee — male or female in theory, though in practice almost exclusively female — who satisfies two conditions at the time the employer initiates dismissal:

  • Six months of continuous employment with the same employer. The clock runs from the actual start date of employment, including any probationary period. An employee who became pregnant during a trial period and is still within the first 6 months has no Section 9 right — though dismissal may still be challengeable on other equality grounds.
  • Being pregnant at the time the dismissal is initiated. The employer does not have to know about the pregnancy for the protection to apply. If the employer dismisses on Day 60 of pregnancy unaware of it, the dismissal is still void once the pregnancy is confirmed — including retrospectively.

The protection runs through the entire pregnancy and is not limited to any particular trimester. A woman who discovers she is pregnant at 6 weeks and is dismissed at 8 weeks is protected. So is a woman in her 34th week dismissed the day before her maternity leave begins.

The protection is not limited to biological pregnancy. Section 9B extends the same protection framework to adoptive parents in certain circumstances and to employees who undergo surrogacy arrangements as intended parents under the Surrogacy Agreements Law 5756-1996, where the employee is entitled to equivalent leave.

3. The Ministry Permission Process: Step by Step

When an employer decides that dismissal of a pregnant employee is genuinely necessary — for reasons the employer believes are unrelated to the pregnancy — the only legal route is a formal application to the Commissioner for Equal Employment Opportunities at the Ministry of Economy and Industry.

The process works as follows:

  1. Written application to the Commissioner. The employer submits a written application through the Ministry of Economy and Industry's online employer portal or in person at the Ministry's district offices. The application must set out the grounds for dismissal in full detail and attach supporting documents: the employment contract, the personnel file, evidence of the grounds for termination (restructuring plans, financial data, disciplinary records), and proof of the employment dates.
  2. Notification to the employee. The Commissioner notifies the employee within a few days that an application has been filed. The employee has the right to submit a written response — typically within 7 to 10 business days — and in some cases to request an oral hearing.
  3. Commissioner's decision. The Commissioner considers both submissions and issues a written decision, typically within 30 to 45 days of receiving a complete application. The decision either grants permission (allowing the employer to proceed with dismissal on standard notice) or denies it. There is no partial permission — it is binary.
  4. Appeal. If the Commissioner grants permission and the employee disagrees, the employee can appeal to the Regional Labor Court within 30 days under the Administrative Courts Law 5752-1992. If the Commissioner denies permission and the employer disagrees, the employer can similarly appeal. The court does not hold a full re-hearing; it reviews the Commissioner's decision for reasonableness and legal error.

No dismissal notice can be given and no dismissal can take effect until written permission is in hand. An employer who gives notice before receiving permission — even the day after filing the application — triggers a void dismissal.

In Practice — Genuine Restructuring, Permission Denied: A Tel Aviv logistics firm filed an application to dismiss a warehouse supervisor in her 5th month of pregnancy as part of a documented company-wide restructuring that eliminated 12 positions. The Commissioner reviewed the organisational chart before and after the restructuring, the timing of the announcement relative to when HR learned of the pregnancy, and the criteria used to select which positions were cut. The Commissioner found that the pregnancy was announced to HR three weeks before the restructuring list was finalised and that the employee's position was added to the list after that disclosure. Permission was denied on the basis that the timing created a rebuttable presumption of pregnancy discrimination under Section 9(e) that the employer had not rebutted. The employer did not appeal; the supervisor's position was retained until her return from maternity leave, after which the restructuring proceeded lawfully.

4. Protection During Fertility Treatments

Section 9A of the Employment of Women Law 5714-1954 extends the Ministry permission requirement beyond pregnancy itself to cover employees who are absent from work to undergo fertility treatments, including in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), ovarian stimulation, egg retrieval, embryo transfer, and related procedures.

The protection under Section 9A applies for the duration of a calendar year in which the employee accumulates up to 150 days of fertility-treatment absences. These days need not be consecutive. An employee who takes 20 days in January, 30 more in April, and 40 more in September has used 90 of the 150 protected days. Dismissal on any of those days, or during the calendar year while any remaining balance exists, requires Commissioner permission.

The 150-day figure is the annual ceiling, not a rolling period. An employee who exhausted the full 150 days in one calendar year and continues treatments in the next calendar year gets a fresh 150-day balance from 1 January. The protection resets annually.

Employers sometimes try to dismiss during the gaps between treatment cycles, arguing the employee is not currently in a treatment absence. Courts have rejected this approach: the protected period runs through the entire calendar year once fertility treatment is ongoing, not only on the specific days the employee is physically absent. An application to the Commissioner is required regardless of whether the dismissal is timed to avoid an absence day.

In Practice — IVF Third Cycle, Dismissal Mid-Year: A marketing manager at a Petah Tikva distribution company was undergoing her third IVF cycle. By June 2026 she had accumulated 65 days of fertility-treatment absences under Section 9A of the Employment of Women Law 5714-1954. Her employer initiated performance-management proceedings on 1 July — a day she was back at work between cycles — and gave her a dismissal letter citing poor sales results. The employer argued Section 9A did not apply because she was not actually absent on the dismissal date. The Regional Labor Court of Central District rejected this argument. The dismissal was void. The court noted that the employer had not applied to the Commissioner and awarded NIS 62,000 in statutory damages plus 7 months' salary (NIS 84,000) in compensation. The performance documentation produced by the employer was found to be largely manufactured in the weeks immediately after it learned of the fertility treatments.

5. The 60-Day Post-Return Protection

Section 9(b) of the Employment of Women Law 5714-1954 extends the protection for 60 days after the employee returns from maternity leave. The 60-day clock begins on the first actual day the employee is back at work — not from the formal last day of the maternity leave entitlement as recorded on paper.

An employee who returns on 3 August 2026 is protected from dismissal — without Commissioner permission — until 2 October 2026. An employer who schedules a restructuring announcement for 5 September 2026 and includes that employee's position in it cannot do so without first obtaining permission, even though the pregnancy and maternity leave are over.

The post-return protection exists because Israeli courts recognised that the period immediately after maternity leave is when most pregnancy-linked dismissals actually occur. An employer who could not dismiss during pregnancy might simply wait. Section 9(b) closes that gap. It also covers the situation where an employer puts the returning employee in a materially worse role, which the courts treat as a constructive dismissal requiring Commissioner permission in the same way as an actual termination.

In Practice — Restructuring Timed for Return, Day 55: A product manager at a Ramat Gan fintech company returned from maternity leave on 1 June 2026. On 25 July — day 55 of the post-return protection — she received a letter stating her role was being merged with a senior position and she was being made redundant effective 1 September. The employer had not applied to the Commissioner for Equal Employment Opportunities. The dismissal was void. The employer applied to the Commissioner on 26 July, eight days before the 60-day window closed. The Commissioner noted that the employer had timed the notice to fall within the window without prior approval and found the timing itself circumstantially suggestive of protected-period discrimination. Permission was denied. The Regional Labor Court upheld the denial on appeal. The employee's position was restored, and the eventual lawful restructuring — after the 60-day window expired — was handled with prior Commissioner approval obtained in advance.

6. When the Commissioner May Grant Permission

The Commissioner does not automatically deny every application. There are circumstances in which permission is granted, though they are narrow and must be clearly established by the employer on the evidence.

The most reliably approved ground is full cessation of business operations: if the employer is closing entirely (not restructuring, not offshoring a department, not being sold) the Commissioner will generally grant permission because there is simply no business to return to at the end of maternity leave.

A second ground that sometimes succeeds is serious disciplinary misconduct that is entirely documented, predates the employer's knowledge of the pregnancy, and is sufficiently grave to justify dismissal on its own. Even here, the Commissioner scrutinises timing carefully: if disciplinary proceedings were not commenced before the pregnancy became known, the Commissioner will look hard at whether the pregnancy disclosure was the actual trigger.

What does not succeed as a ground for permission:

  • Economic difficulty that stops short of full closure
  • Redundancy of the specific position as part of a restructuring
  • Performance concerns that arose or escalated after the pregnancy was disclosed
  • The employee's position being filled during her maternity leave by someone who "turned out to be better"
  • Fixed-term contract expiry — discussed separately below

7. Fixed-Term Contracts and the Non-Renewal Trap

A common trap for employers — particularly foreign companies that hired Israeli employees on fixed-term contracts of 6 to 24 months — is the non-renewal rule. Under Section 9(d) of the Employment of Women Law 5714-1954, the non-renewal of a fixed-term contract during the pregnancy protection period, or within 60 days of return from maternity leave, is treated as dismissal for all purposes under Section 9.

This means that when a fixed-term contract expires while the employee is pregnant, and the employer simply allows the contract to end without renewing it, the employer has committed a void dismissal — exactly as if it had handed the employee a termination letter. The Commissioner's prior permission is required to allow a fixed-term contract to expire during the protected period without renewal.

The same rule applies to a contract that expires while the employee is on maternity leave, or whose renewal is declined within 60 days of her return to work.

Employers sometimes argue that they are not "dismissing" but merely "not renewing." The Employment of Women Law treats those outcomes as legally identical during the protected period. The only way to let a fixed-term contract expire without renewal during that window is with Commissioner permission.

In Practice — B/1 Expert on Fixed-Term Contract, Pregnancy in Month 9: An American UX designer working in Tel Aviv on a B/1 Expert visa held a 12-month fixed-term employment contract at NIS 28,000 per month. She became pregnant in month 9. When her contract expired at month 12, her employer notified her it would not be renewed, citing the position being moved offshore. She had been with the employer for 12 months (satisfying the 6-month threshold). The employer had not obtained Commissioner permission. The Regional Labor Court of Tel Aviv-Jaffa found the non-renewal was a void dismissal under Section 9(d) of the Employment of Women Law 5714-1954. The employer was ordered to pay 8 months' salary (NIS 224,000) in lieu of reinstatement — calculated through the end of her maternity leave period and the 60-day post-return window — plus NIS 50,000 in statutory damages. Her National Insurance maternity allowance rights were also preserved, as the NII (Bituach Leumi) treats the contract as notionally continuing through the maternity leave entitlement period.

8. Compensation for Void or Unlawful Dismissal During Pregnancy

When a dismissal during pregnancy is found to be void, the Regional Labor Court has a range of remedies available.

Reinstatement is the primary remedy: the court orders the employer to treat the employee as continuously employed, restore her position, and pay all salary, pension contributions, and benefits from the date of the void dismissal forward. In practice, many cases settle on agreed terms before the final hearing, with the employer restoring pay without necessarily restoring the working relationship.

Compensation in lieu of reinstatement is awarded when the working relationship has irretrievably broken down. Israeli case law puts the typical range at 6 to 12 months of the employee's monthly salary. Where the employer's conduct was particularly egregious — for example, fabricating performance documentation after learning of the pregnancy — the court can exceed that range under Section 10 of the Equal Employment Opportunities Law 5748-1988.

Statutory damages under the Equal Employment Opportunities Law 5748-1988 are awarded on top of salary compensation. The current range in Regional Labor Court decisions is NIS 40,000 to NIS 70,000 for a first violation, without the employee needing to prove any specific financial loss. These are damages for the breach of the right itself.

NII maternity allowance restoration. A void dismissal during pregnancy means the employee's employment continuity is treated as unbroken for National Insurance purposes. The NII (Bituach Leumi) pays maternity allowance at 100% of the employee's wage (up to the NII ceiling) for the statutory 15-week maternity leave period. Courts routinely include an order requiring the employer to make the NII contributions that would have been paid during any gap in formal employment caused by the void dismissal.

Court costs and attorney fees are almost always awarded against the employer when a void dismissal is established. These run from NIS 15,000 to NIS 40,000 in typical cases, though they can be higher in complex multi-day trials.

9. Foreign Workers and Expats: How the Rules Apply

Every provision in this guide applies in full to foreign nationals employed in Israel under an Israeli employment contract, regardless of nationality, religion, or immigration status. The Employment of Women Law 5714-1954 is a mandatory-minimum statute: no employment contract, whether governed by Israeli or foreign law, can strip an employee of Section 9 protection for work performed in Israel.

A few situations come up specifically for foreign employees.

B/1 work permit holders

A B/1 Expert or B/1 permit worker dismissed in violation of Section 9 retains the right to claim void dismissal despite the fact that the work permit is technically employer-specific. The Regional Labor Court treats the employment relationship as notionally continuing for the duration of the protected period, which means the employer's obligations — salary, benefits, pension, NII contributions — run through the entire period even though the physical work relationship has ended.

New immigrants (Olim)

New immigrants who become pregnant during their first months of employment still need to satisfy the 6-month service threshold to qualify for Section 9 protection. Before that threshold is met, dismissal that is demonstrably connected to the pregnancy may be challengeable under the Equal Employment Opportunities Law 5748-1988 on discrimination grounds, with a separate compensation framework that does not require 6 months of service.

Contracts drafted under foreign law

When an overseas employer has placed an employee in Israel using a contract drafted under US, UK, or European law — as commonly occurs in tech and life sciences — Israeli courts apply Section 9 to the Israeli-work portion of the relationship. A foreign-law employment contract cannot waive the Israeli pregnancy protection for a role performed in Israel. Foreign employers operating this way are often unaware of the Ministry permission requirement and accidentally trigger a void dismissal by following their home-country HR process.

In Practice — French Employee, Foreign-Law Contract, Israeli Workplace: A French citizen employed in Israel by the Israeli subsidiary of a French multinational was handed a redundancy letter in her 6th month of pregnancy. Her employment contract was governed by French law, and the parent company's HR team in Paris followed French consultation procedures without awareness of Israeli law. Her contract had been in place for 22 months. Under Section 9 of the Employment of Women Law 5714-1954, the Commissioner for Equal Employment Opportunities had jurisdiction over the dismissal because the work was performed in Israel. The employer had not applied to the Commissioner. The Regional Labor Court held the dismissal void. The French-law clause did not override the Israeli mandatory minimum. The employer was ordered to pay 10 months' salary at NIS 32,000 per month (NIS 320,000) in lieu of reinstatement, NIS 55,000 in statutory damages, and NIS 25,000 in attorney fees. The France-Israel bilateral social security agreement preserved her NII maternity allowance rights through the Bituach Leumi branch office.

If the employment relationship has been severed, it is also worth reading our guides on maternity and paternity leave in Israel, wrongful termination in Israel, employment law in Israel for foreign nationals, and the pre-dismissal hearing requirement.