Government Bills
A Government bill is presented to the Speaker of the Knesset by the Minister concerned, and the Speaker places it on the Knesset table. During the deliberation, the Minister, or a Deputy Minister in his Ministry, presents an explanation of the law. At the end of the debate on first reading, the plenum can decide to reject the bill, or to refer it to a committee, for preparation for second reading. The Committee that was assigned the task of dealing with the bill is entitled to propose amendments, as it may see fit, as long as these amendments do not diverge from the subject of the bill. With the approval of the House Committee, the Committee can combine bills, or split a bill into two or more bills. Once the Committee has completed its work, it returns the bill to the plenum for second and third reading. The debate on second reading is opened by the Chairman of the Committee that dealt with the bill. The voting on second reading is performed article by article. At this stage the bill may be returned to the Committee, if it is necessary to draft the reservations that were adopted in second reading, or be put immediately to the vote in third reading. Until the bill is adopted in third reading, the Government is entitled to withdraw it.

Committee Bills
A bill presented by a Committee is dealt with in the same manner as a Government Bill. Unlike Government bills and private members' bills, Committee bills can only deal with the following subjects: basic laws and laws dealing with the Knesset, elections to the Knesset, Members of Knesset, or the State Comptroller.

Private Members' Bills
Bills presented by a Member of the Knesset or a group of Knesset members, is presented to the Speaker of the Knesset by the proposer(s). The Speaker and his deputies decide whether to approve placing the bill on the Knesset's agenda. A bill that is racist in its essence, or rejects the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish People, shall not be approved.

A bill that has been approved to be placed on the Knesset agenda, is usually placed on the Knesset table at least 45 days before it is brought to the plenum for preliminary reading. The plenum can remove it from its agenda, or refer it to a committee, for preparation for first reading. As of the stage of first reading, the legislative process is similar to that of a Government bill. A private members' bill can be withdrawn until the end of the deliberation in the Committee, after the first reading.

Since July 2002, any bill, whose annual budgetary cost is over NIS 5 million, and is not supported by the Government, can only be adopted with the votes of at least 50 Members of the Knesset, at every stage of the legislation.

Data Regarding Private Members' Bills
As of the 11th Knesset, the number of private members' bills has increased drastically. Despite this fact, the percentage of private members' bills adopted from among those placed on the Knesset table, keeps falling. The main reason for this is that the number of "declarations of law" - bills presented only in order to attract attention - is progressively growing.

	3rd Knesset	11th Knesset	12th Knesset	13th Knesset	14th Knesset	15th Knesset (until July 2002)
No. of private members' bills placed on the Knesset table	47	721	1,473	3,629	2,651	4,012
No. of private members' bills that reached preliminary reading		278	535	1,187	585	844
No. of private members' bills that were adopted	18	74	129	245	140	194
Total No. of bills that were adopted	292	294	318	473	274	365
% of private members' bills that reached preliminary reading		37.2%	36.3%	32.7%	22.1%	21.0%
% of private members' bills that were placed on the Knesset table and were adopted	38.3%	10.3%	8.8%	6.7%	5.3%	4.8%
% of private members' bills that reached preliminary reading and were adopted		26.6%	24.1%	20.7%	23.7%	22.9%
% of private members' bills of the total number of bills adopted	6.2%	25.2%	40.6%	51.8%	51.1%	53.1%

Legislation of Basic Laws
The process of legislating basic laws is no different to that of legislating an ordinary law. Even though the "Harari proposal" of 1950 assigned to the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee the task of preparing a constitution for the state, most of the basic laws were presented to the Knesset as Government bills. Only Basic Law: the Knesset was by the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. Basic Law: Human Freedom and Dignity, and Basic Law: the Government, that was passed in 1992, were the initiatives of Members of the Knesset.

Publication in the Official Gazette
From the establishment of the State and until September 2002 two series of the Official Gazette publications were published in connection with legislation: one of all the bills towards first reading ("The Official Gazette: Bills"), and the second of bills that passed all the stages of legislation and entered the law book ("The Official Gazette: the Book of Laws"). In each of the series, the bills, on the one hand, and the laws, on the other, were numbered chronologically.

As of October 2002, the bills' series was split in two, and now there are separate series of Knesset bills - in other words, private members' bills and Committee bills ("The Official Gazette: bills - Knesset", and Government bills ("The Official Gazette: bills - Government"). Since the splitting into two series, the various bills have started being renumbered.