Quick Answer: Every employee in Israel accrues 1.5 sick days per calendar month of employment under the Sick Pay Law 5736-1976 (*Chok Dmei Mahalah*). The first day of any illness episode is unpaid. The second and third days are paid at 50% of the daily wage. From the fourth day onward, the employer pays 100%. Unused sick days accumulate up to a maximum of 90 days and are paid out on termination in some circumstances. Foreign nationals and workers on B/1 permits have exactly the same rights as Israeli employees — the Sick Pay Law draws no distinction based on nationality.

Foreign workers in Israel are frequently surprised to learn that sick leave here operates differently from most European and North American systems. There is no state sickness benefit paid by a government agency for ordinary illness — the employer carries the cost directly. The rules on how many days you accrue, what percentage you receive, and what documents you need to submit are all set by a single statute, the Sick Pay Law 5736-1976, with additional protections layered on through sectoral extension orders and individual employment contracts.

Below is how sick leave accrues, what the pay rates mean in take-home terms, what medical documentation your employer can demand, the protection against dismissal during illness, when a work accident opens a different channel entirely, and what changes — or does not — for foreign nationals.

The Sick Pay Law 5736-1976 (*Chok Dmei Mahalah*, חוק דמי מחלה) is the primary statute governing paid sick leave for employees. It applies to all employees in Israel who work for an employer, regardless of the employee's nationality, residency status, or the type of visa they hold. Independent contractors (*kafuim*) and self-employed workers (*osek patur/murshe*) are not covered. Sick pay is an employee-status right. If an Israeli court classifies someone as an independent contractor, the Sick Pay Law does not apply.

The law sets a minimum floor. An employer can always give more (through a written employment contract, a collective agreement, or a sectoral extension order, *tzav harchavah*) but cannot give less. Many employers in Israel's technology sector, for example, effectively pay sick leave from day one at 100% as a matter of employment contract practice. The statutory minimum is what applies when the contract is silent.

The Sick Pay Law defines a "sick day" as a calendar day (not a working day) during which the employee was unable to work due to illness or injury that is not work-related. For part-time employees, the calculation adjusts proportionally based on the scope of the part-time position relative to a full-time role.

In Practice: Many employees — including experienced ones — confuse "sick day" with "sick working day." The Sick Pay Law counts calendar days from the day you first reported ill, not only days you would have worked. If you fall ill on Thursday evening and return to work on Monday, you have used four calendar sick days (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday) even though your normal schedule might be Sunday through Thursday. Regional Labor Court judgments have consistently applied the calendar-day rule; consult your employment contract to see whether your employer applies a more generous working-day calculation instead.

2. How Sick Days Accumulate

Under Section 4 of the Sick Pay Law, an employee accrues 1.5 sick days for each complete month of employment. That works out to 18 sick days per year of full employment. Accrual begins from the first month of work. There is no statutory waiting period or probationary exclusion, though some collective agreements impose a short waiting period for the full benefit.

Unused sick days carry forward. The law permits accumulation up to a ceiling of 90 days. An employee who has worked for five years without taking any sick leave would have accumulated the maximum 90 days. An employee who uses some days resets that portion of the balance.

On termination, whether by dismissal or resignation, the Sick Pay Law does not require the employer to pay out accumulated sick days as cash unless the employment contract or an applicable extension order says so. However, several widely applicable extension orders do create a right to partial or full payout of unused sick days at retirement age or after long service. The precise rules depend on which extension order covers your sector.

In Practice: A common scenario in Regional Labor Court claims: an employee who is dismissed after several years learns that their employer deducted from the final settlement payment a sum representing "sick days used," arguing those days were not genuinely medically necessary. Section 4A of the Sick Pay Law states that an employer who doubts a sick leave claim must raise the objection through the proper channels at the time — not deduct unilaterally at the point of termination. Employees should retain all medical certificates and doctor's receipts throughout their employment and compare deductions against payslips monthly. Retroactive challenges by employers after termination face a heavy evidential burden.

3. Sick Pay Rates: The Three-Tier Structure

The Sick Pay Law creates a three-tier payment structure tied to how long the sick episode lasts:

Day 1 — No pay. The first calendar day of any sick leave episode is unpaid under the statute. The employee bears the full cost. This applies regardless of how many sick days have accumulated in the employee's balance. An employee who has 90 accumulated days and falls ill for one day receives nothing for that day from the employer under the statutory minimum.

Days 2 and 3 — 50% of the daily wage. If the sick episode extends to the second and third days, the employer pays half the employee's normal daily wage for each of those days.

Day 4 onward — 100% of the daily wage. From the fourth calendar day of a continuous sick episode, the employer pays the full daily wage. This continues for as long as the employee has accumulated sick days remaining in their balance. Once accumulated days are exhausted, no further sick pay is owed.

The daily wage is calculated by dividing the employee's monthly gross salary by 30 (for a full-time employee on a monthly salary). For hourly employees, it is the contractual daily rate. Overtime supplements, performance bonuses, and expense reimbursements are generally not included in the calculation base unless the employment contract says otherwise.

In Practice: Consider an employee on a monthly gross salary of NIS 18,000. Their daily wage for sick pay purposes is NIS 18,000 / 30 = NIS 600. On a five-day illness (Monday to Friday):
  • Day 1 (Monday): NIS 0
  • Days 2–3 (Tuesday, Wednesday): NIS 300 each = NIS 600
  • Days 4–5 (Thursday, Friday): NIS 600 each = NIS 1,200
Total sick pay for the episode: NIS 1,800 — against a daily full-wage equivalent of NIS 3,000 for five days. Many employers — particularly in hi-tech, finance, and professional services — voluntarily pay 100% from day one as an employment benefit; check your written employment contract. If your contract says "sick pay according to law," you receive the statutory minimum.

A number of sectoral extension orders improve on the statutory minimum. The extension order covering hotel and restaurant workers, for example, increases the day-two and day-three rate to 75% for employees with more than six months of seniority. The extension order for the building trades has its own schedule. If you work in a sector covered by a collective agreement or extension order, your entitlements may be better than the statutory floor, and the employer must apply whichever rules are more favorable.

4. Medical Certificates: What Your Employer Can Require

Section 2 of the Sick Pay Law conditions payment on the employee providing a medical certificate (*teudat mahalah*, תעודת מחלה) confirming that the absence was due to genuine illness. The certificate must come from a physician licensed to practice medicine in Israel or from the employee's Kupat Holim (health fund) clinic.

An employer can require a certificate for any absence, including a single day. In practice, most employers skip that demand for one-day absences. One-day absences are unpaid anyway, and chasing certificates for every minor illness creates administrative friction with no financial benefit. For absences of two days or more — where the employer begins to pay — a certificate is almost always required in practice.

The certificate must state the dates of medically certified incapacity. It does not need to state the diagnosis. Employees have a right to medical privacy, and a doctor's certificate confirming incapacity for specified dates is legally sufficient. Employers cannot require disclosure of the underlying medical condition as a condition of paying sick pay.

If an employee cannot attend a doctor in person — because they are too ill to leave home — a telephone consultation with their Kupat Holim doctor can generate a digital certificate in the Clalit, Maccabi, Meuhedet, or Leumit system. Many employees are unaware that this option exists. The digital certificate is legally equivalent to a paper one.

In Practice: Foreign workers who are not yet registered with a Kupat Holim face a practical gap. New immigrants and long-term residents are registered automatically, but a foreign worker on a B/1 permit whose employer has not enrolled them in a health fund — a requirement under the Foreign Workers Law 5751-1991 — may not have easy access to a Kupat Holim clinic. The employer's obligation under Section 1(b) of the Foreign Workers Law is to provide health insurance covering at a minimum the equivalent of Kupat Holim basic basket. If your employer has not arranged health insurance, they cannot then refuse to pay sick pay on the grounds that you lack a Kupat Holim certificate. Seek a certificate from any licensed private physician; it carries identical legal weight. Document the situation in writing to your employer.

5. Protection from Dismissal While on Sick Leave

Section 6 of the Sick Pay Law prohibits an employer from dismissing an employee while the employee is on sick leave, provided the employee has accumulated sick days covering the period. The protection runs for the duration of the sick leave, up to the accumulated maximum of 90 days.

This prohibition is absolute as to timing. An employer may have entirely valid grounds for termination and still cannot deliver a dismissal while the employee is on certified sick leave. A notice of dismissal issued during sick leave is void. The employment relationship continues until the employee returns to work, at which point the dismissal notice must be reissued from the day of return.

The protection does not freeze the notice period clock indefinitely. Where a dismissal notice was validly issued before the sick leave began, Regional Labor Courts have held that the notice period is suspended for the duration of the sick leave, recommencing when the employee returns. Dismissal is not permanently blocked; it is delayed.

In Practice: A foreign worker who receives a dismissal letter from their employer on the day they submitted a medical certificate is in a strong legal position. The Regional Labor Court (Beit Din Avodah Ezioni, located in each major district) can issue an injunction restoring the employment relationship and ordering back-pay for the period of unlawful dismissal under Section 6 of the Sick Pay Law. The court can also award compensatory damages separate from back-pay for the breach. The Sick Pay Law dismissal protection applies on top of any other applicable protection — for example, the heightened protection for pregnant employees under the Employment of Women Law 5714-1954, which prohibits dismissal for 60 days after a return from sick leave related to pregnancy.

Employers sometimes attempt to circumvent the dismissal protection by characterizing a termination during sick leave as "resignation." Courts have consistently seen through these arrangements. A "mutual agreement to terminate" signed while an employee is ill and economically vulnerable will be scrutinized carefully for the voluntariness of the employee's consent. Regional Labor Courts have set aside such agreements where the employer initiated the separation and the employee signed under financial pressure.

6. Work Injury vs. Ordinary Sick Leave: Two Separate Systems

Not all illness or incapacity during employment is processed through the employer's sick pay system. When incapacity results from a work accident (*teuna be'avoda*) or an occupational disease (*machalat miktzo*), a separate channel applies: the National Insurance Institute's Work Injury Insurance (*bituach netunat nifga'ei avoda*).

Under the National Insurance Law 5754-1994, an employee who is injured at work or develops a recognized occupational disease is entitled to receive a daily disability payment from the NII directly — not from the employer. The NII pays 75% of the employee's insured daily wage (based on the average of the three months preceding the accident), with a ceiling of approximately NIS 1,100 per day in 2026, for the duration of medically certified work incapacity.

Two features distinguish this from ordinary sick leave. The NII work injury payment starts from day one, with no unpaid first day deducted. And it continues for up to 26 weeks, after which long-term disability benefits take over. That is a much longer window than the 90-day employer-paid ceiling under the Sick Pay Law.

To access work injury benefits, the employee must report the accident to the employer immediately, and the employer must submit a report to the NII within 10 days using Form 250. The employee then submits a Form 211 (Work Injury Claim) to the nearest NII branch, together with the treating doctor's Form 215. Foreign workers on B/1 permits are fully covered by NII work injury insurance, because employers of permit-holding foreign workers pay the standard NII employer contribution that includes work injury insurance.

In Practice: Many injured workers make the mistake of letting the employer process the incapacity through the ordinary sick leave system instead of filing a work injury claim with the NII. The difference in outcome can be significant. Under the sick pay system, a worker with 30 accumulated sick days who suffers a serious work injury receives employer-paid sick pay for 30 days only, with the first day unpaid. Under the work injury system filed correctly with the NII, they receive 75% of their insured daily wage from day one for up to 26 weeks, plus the right to challenge any NII determination of incapacity percentage before the Labor Court. File the NII work injury claim immediately after any work-related accident, regardless of severity. The NII office in Tel Aviv handles most claims: address is 40 Weizmann Street; the national NII helpline is 04-8812345.

7. Foreign Workers, Expats, and New Immigrants: What You Need to Know

The Sick Pay Law applies to all employees in Israel — there is no carve-out based on nationality, place of birth, or immigration status. A foreign national working on a B/1 work permit accrues sick days at the same 1.5 days per month rate, receives the same three-tier pay structure, and is entitled to the same dismissal protection under Section 6 as any Israeli employee.

On health fund access: B/1 permit holders whose employer has complied with the Foreign Workers Law are enrolled in a health insurance plan covering the Kupat Holim basic basket equivalent. Certificates from that private insurer carry the same legal weight as a Kupat Holim certificate. New immigrants (*Olim Hadashim*) receive the right to register with a Kupat Holim from the date of aliyah, with registration typically taking effect within one to two weeks.

Short-term assignees are a grayer area. A foreign national on a payroll abroad working in Israel for less than 183 days may not be covered by the Sick Pay Law if the employment contract is governed by foreign law. However, if the work runs under the direction and control of an Israeli entity, Israeli courts will generally apply Israeli mandatory employment law regardless of what the contract says. If you are on a secondment or short assignment, ask your employer whether Israeli sick pay applies. Do not assume it does not.

On medical certificates issued in Hebrew: employers cannot refuse to accept them on the grounds they do not read the language. A foreign worker who obtains a certificate from a doctor outside Israel while temporarily abroad should have it translated into Hebrew or English if the employer requests it, though the cost of translation falls on the employer, not the employee, when the obligation arises from their own requirement.

After 12 weeks of continuous sick leave, an employee still unable to work can apply to the NII for a general disability benefit (*givat nechut klali*) under Chapter 9 of the National Insurance Law. The NII assesses functional disability; workers with 40% or more disability receive the full monthly allowance (roughly NIS 4,500–5,600/month in 2026, depending on family status). Foreign nationals who have paid NII contributions for at least 12 months qualify on the same basis as Israeli residents. This benefit runs alongside any sick pay still owed by the employer and does not reduce it.

In Practice: A foreign employee whose employer operates an employer-of-record arrangement — common for remote workers from abroad hired by Israeli companies without a local entity — should verify explicitly whether the EOR agreement includes sick pay obligations under the Sick Pay Law. Most Israeli EOR providers include it as a matter of course, because they are the legal employer and Israeli mandatory law applies automatically. But some agreements drafted offshore apply the sick pay rules of the worker's home country. Under Israeli law, the mandatory protections of the Sick Pay Law cannot be waived by contract for work performed in Israel — even if a contract clause says otherwise.

Frequently Asked Questions

Partly. Under the Sick Pay Law 5736-1976, only the first day is unpaid — days two and three are paid at 50% of your daily wage. If your employment contract or applicable extension order is silent or simply says "sick pay according to law," days two and three must be paid at the 50% rate. If your employer is paying nothing for the first three days, they are underpaying on days two and three. File a written complaint with the employer and, if unresolved, with the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Social Services enforcement unit. Claims for underpaid sick leave can go back six years under the general statute of limitations applicable to wage claims.
No. An employer cannot compel you to use annual leave (*chufsha*) in place of accumulated sick leave for a genuine illness. The Sick Pay Law and the Annual Leave Law 5711-1951 cover separate categories of absence. Deducting from annual leave for an illness-related absence — without the employee's voluntary agreement — is unlawful. Some employers attempt this to avoid paying sick pay at all during the first day (where sick pay is nil anyway) or to preserve sick day balances. The proper response is a written objection to the employer and, if necessary, a claim to the Regional Labor Court. If the employee voluntarily agrees to use annual leave, the deduction is not unlawful — but consent must be genuine, not coerced.
Yes, fully. The Sick Pay Law 5736-1976 applies to all employees working in Israel, including foreign nationals on B/1 permits. You accrue 1.5 sick days per month, you receive the same three-tier pay structure, and you have the same protection against dismissal during sick leave under Section 6. Your employer cannot treat you differently from Israeli staff on sick leave entitlements. If your employer denies sick pay on the basis of your immigration status, that is both a violation of the Sick Pay Law and potentially a violation of the Equal Opportunity in Employment Law 5748-1988 (which covers national origin discrimination). Report the situation to the Ministry of Labor's enforcement unit, which has specific foreign worker enforcement teams.
Not automatically under the Sick Pay Law itself. The statute does not create a general right to cash out unused sick days on termination. However, several sectoral extension orders and collective agreements do create a payout right — commonly, one-third to one-half of unused sick days are paid at termination for employees with more than five years of seniority in sectors covered by those orders (notably the public sector, certain municipal authorities, and large industrial employers under the Federation of Labor collective framework). Check whether an extension order applies to your employer. If you are in the private sector without a collective agreement, your employment contract is the governing document — look for any clause about sick leave balance on exit.
All four Kupat Holim (Clalit, Maccabi, Meuhedet, and Leumit) offer telephone and video consultations through their apps and member phone lines. A doctor conducting a phone or video consultation can issue a digital medical certificate for the dates of incapacity. The digital certificate is automatically generated in the Kupat Holim system and available for download immediately. It is legally identical to a paper certificate issued after an in-person visit. If you are not enrolled in a Kupat Holim, call a private GP or specialist — private doctors in Israel can issue equivalent certificates, and they carry the same legal standing with employers.

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Employment Law in Israel for Foreign Nationals Foreign Worker Rights in Israel Wrongful Termination in Israel Recovering Unpaid Wages in Israel Maternity and Paternity Leave in Israel
Adv. Eli Shimony
Adv. Eli Shimony
Licensed Israeli Attorney · Founder, IsraelLaw.info

Eli Shimony Law Office · Editorial policy

Eli Shimony is a licensed Israeli attorney advising foreign nationals, overseas employers, and diaspora families on Israeli labor, employment, and civil law. He founded IsraelLaw.info to give English speakers accurate, practical guidance on navigating the Israeli legal system.