A bill that enables judges to mandate electronic monitoring systems on domestic abusers passed into law on Sunday, after months of delays and sparring over different versions of the legislation. The law, which passed 44-0, is officially an emergency order which will expire in three years. It only goes into effect next year.

The Domestic Abuse Monitoring Law passed 44-0 (Footage: Knesset Channel)

Critics of the far-right government had accused it of dragging its feet and reworking the legislation unnecessarily in order to take credit for a law that was initially put forward by the last government.

“The monitoring law has passed,” said Hadash MK Aida Touma-Sliman, who was one of the MKs to put forward the original version of the bill. “The same law with a few small changes — most of them not good.” However, Touma-Sliman, former chair of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women, welcomed the passage of the law “that I fought to pass for eight years.” Touma-Sliman called the new law “an essential tool for defending women and children who are victims of violence,” adding that she was “very happy despite the attempts of the [racist] minister [Itamar Ben Gvir] to empty the law of its content.”

Since the start of the year, at least 17 women have been murdered in Israel, according to the Israel Women’s Network, amounting to a killing every 11 days. According to the Israel Observatory on Femicide, in 2022, 24 women were “murdered because they were women,” a 50 percent rise over the 16 such murders recorded in 2021.