Israel will for the first time distinguish between first- and second-degree murder as most Western countries do, according to legislation being prepared by the Justice Ministry.

Currently, Israel's penal code contains only murder and manslaughter. The new crime of second-degree murder would fall between these two charges on the scale of severity.

Such a change in the existing law, which dates back to 1936, has long been urged by the Supreme Court, most recently in response to David Biton's murder of Eli Benisti in 2000.

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Biton had been buying drugs from Benisti for two years, paying either in cash or with tranquilizers obtained via a doctor's prescription. But one day the two men quarreled over payment, and Benisti threatened that if Biton did not deliver he would go to Biton's house and kill his parents.

In response, Biton grabbed a blunt object in the room and bludgeoned Benisti to death.

Biton argued in court that Benisti had provoked him, causing him to murder the dealer in a fit of passion. Had this claim been accepted, Biton would have been convicted only of manslaughter.

The court instead convicted him of murder, and a seven-justice panel of the Supreme Court upheld the verdict last November. In his ruling, however, then Supreme Court president Aharon Barak noted that the case really fell between murder and manslaughter, and urged the Knesset to reform the penal code to address such cases.

Barak's suggestion was followed up not by the Justice Ministry, but by MK Nissan Slomiansky (National Union-National Religious Party). He submitted a private member's bill to the Knesset that would create the crime of second-degree murder.

The Ministerial Committee on Legislation discussed the bill last week and took action. According to a deal reached by Slomiansky and Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann, Slomiansky's bill would be brought up for a preliminary reading in the Knesset - which it passed later in the week - and then frozen for five months to give the ministry time to prepare its own legislation. The ministry now intends to convene a panel of experts to draft recommendations on the subject.

Under Slomiansky's bill, which is based on the conclusions of a British panel of experts that has submitted recommendations to the U.K. government, first-degree murder would be reserved for premeditated killings in cold blood, while the new crime of second-degree murder would cover killings committed in the heat of the moment in response to severe provocation. It would also include killings that result from attacks intended to cause serious harm but not death, and killings committed in the act of fleeing justice.

The new crime would also affect the punishment scale. According to the bill, first-degree murder would continue to carry a mandatory sentence of life in prison, but the maximum sentence for manslaughter would be reduced from 20 to 15 years, with second-degree murder in between.

The bill includes two alternative proposals for the sentence this crime should bear.

One is a maximum sentence of life in prison, as for first-degree murder, but with the courts having discretion to impose a lesser sentence - which they do not have for the first-degree crime.

The other is a mandatory sentence of 25 years, with no judicial discretion.

In its negotiations with Slomiansky, the ministry originally asked for a year to prepare its own bill.

But it later agreed to settle for five months due to concerns the Knesset would lose patience and enact Slomiansky's bill instead.

In the ministry's view, Friedmann's office said, it is vital for such a major reform of the penal code to be made via a government bill rather than through private legislation.

The ministry declined to comment on what its own bill might contain. It said in a statement: "Much research is still needed, and work on the matter has only just begun."