חוק חומרי נפץ (תיקון מס' 5), התשפ"ב-2022Law on Explosives Materials (Amendment No. 5), 2022 · automatic translation · suggest a correction

Official summary of the law (Knesset)

The Explosives Law (Amendment No. 5), 2022 was approved in second and third reading on 6 January 2022. The Explosives Law was enacted in 1954 and regulated the supervision of explosive materials in Israel. However, security-related plants were excluded from it, and for decades they operated without supervision. The current amendment regulates, for the first time, the supervision of explosive materials safety within the security establishment. The Law authorizes the Minister of Defense to establish in Regulations the safety provisions that will apply in security-related plants. The Regulations will be enacted after consultation with other relevant ministers – the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Economy and Industry, the Minister of Environmental Protection and the Minister of Public Security. The Law further provides that an advisory committee will operate alongside the Minister of Defense, advising him on all matters relating to the enactment of Regulations and the exercise of his powers. The committee will receive reports from senior inspectors and plant safety officers regarding enforcement measures taken and safety incidents, and will submit to the Minister an annual report on the supervision of explosive materials safety activity in security-related plants, which will also include recommendations for improving safety and improving supervision and enforcement actions. In order to ensure the committee's independence, it was determined that it will be headed by a person holding at least a second academic degree in relevant fields. An annual reporting duty was also established for the Minister of Defense to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee regarding supervision and enforcement actions in security-related plants and safety incidents that occurred in them. In addition, the Law regulates the possibility of imposing financial sanctions, as an administrative tool complementing the criminal tools existing in the Law, with the maximum amount for a sanction being 1,000,000 shekels. Alongside this, the Law grants administrative tools such as safety orders and improvement orders, which inspectors will be able to issue to plants, including the ability to order the correction of safety deficiencies found. The Law also clarifies and sharpens the powers of inspectors, and establishes basic qualification and training requirements. The Law further provides that security establishment plants will be required to appoint explosive materials safety officers, and a similar duty was established for security bodies (the IDF, the Shin Bet, the Mossad, the Israel Police and the Israel Prison Service), which are also required to establish orders or procedures that will, as far as possible, be consistent with the Regulations established by the Minister of Defense.

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What was said in the plenum

The law addresses regulating the Minister of Defense's oversight of explosives safety at security plants, including authorization to set safety regulations, establishing an advisory committee, requiring the appointment of safety officers, and enforcement tools such as safety orders, improvement orders, and financial sanctions. The discussion in the first and second-third readings dealt mainly with the professional content of the arrangement and with closing a years-long regulatory gap, while most of the actual speeches concerned other topics (coalition-opposition, religious reforms, security, economy) that did not directly relate to the bill itself.

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An automatic summary of the plenum transcripts: the debate on the bill at every reading it was voted on. Arguments are given as the speakers made them; this is not an assessment. The list of speakers comes from the transcript, without a model. Transcripts of the sittings: 1, 2

Reservations to the second reading

6 reservations were filed: proposed changes to the text the committee brought to the second and third reading.

The reservations submitted jointly by the opposition factions sought to narrow the powers proposed in the law, add reasonableness conditions and parliamentary oversight (the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee), extend limitation periods, and add protection for those who were unaware that an offense was being committed.

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By faction

• Likud opposition · 6 reservations · 28 members
• Religious Zionism opposition · 6 reservations · 6 members
• United Torah Judaism opposition · 6 reservations · 7 members
• Shas opposition · 6 reservations · 9 members

A joint reservation counts for every faction whose members filed it. 2 proposers were not matched to a member: listed under the groups, not counted by faction.

Proposers and reservation numbers are extracted automatically from the committee version, and the count is checked against the numbers printed in it. The descriptions are an automatic summary. Committee version for the second and third reading (PDF)