I booked a flight with United to the USA and back to Israel. The flight back was a Swiss flight going through ZRH. The remaining leg ZRH-TLV was operated by El-Al.

AFAIK, despite the ticket having the LX (Swiss) code on it, since the flight was operated by El-Al, I don't deserve any miles, and indeed my United MileagePlus account didn't receive any.
However, my partner's Lufthansa Miles&More account did in fact receive miles for that last leg as well.

I tried looking for whether Lufthansa happened to have a partnership with El-Al outside of Star Alliance, but this doesn't seem to be the case, and so I'm left wondering how come my partner did receive points and I haven't.
Am I perhaps wrong to assume that the miles are given according to the operated company in this case?

Your friend got it to credit to Miles & More because it had an LX code. Miles & More is the "home" program of LH, LX, and OS, so any flights with their code should credit regardless of operating carrier. UA on the other hand is not any sort of partner with El Al, therefore didn't credit, it would have had to have a UA code to credit to Mileage Plus.

I certainly understand it could be confusing since United is selling you the ticket, therefore it's easy to misinterpret that they'll credit miles for the entire ticket. Anytime when going off-alliance, it's important to look at whose code is on the flight and who is operating the flight.

You can probably retro credit to a Miles & More account if you have one, but it's a small number of miles and won't do you any good if you're not adding several other flights to the same account.

I've been told for years that whether you can credit in M&M is not based on the 'flight code' but rather the real 'operator'. I also thought op's friend should not get the points at the first place... Maybe Lufty changed the policy (I avoid to book any this kind of flights for years )

Don't believe that's right. Within *A, credit is determined by operating carrier. By contrast, OW credits based on marketing carrier.

This sounds to me like an error by M&M.

Star Alliance credits based upon operating carrier but M&M allows for codeshares booked under LH, LX & OS flight numbers when flown by a non star alliance member. UA Flights on Hawaiian with UA issued tickets won't credit to M&M but will to M+ and when on UA stock calculated by fare multiplier instead of the usual fare code amount.

Is El Al not an official partner of LX? I've seen tons of tickets to TLV where 1 segment is operated by LX and the other by El Al: not just on OTA's, but on the LX website itself too.

I understand that the credit to M&M of LX flights operated by LY is possible due to historic Agreements. However, your partner should have received only regular miles but no status or HON Circle miles.

Within *A that's correct. For off-alliance flights, as Yoshi212 mentioned above regarding UA code on HA and LX code on LY, it's pretty much been the standard as long as I've been flying that those types of flights will always credit to the coded carrier's frequent flyer program regardless of alliance. Back before the alliances were nearly as big as now, I used to fly a lot of such codeshares between Asia and North America and always got credit on the coded carrier, including elite or tier miles.

No need for guessing.
You can look it up on the M&M homepage.

http://www.miles-and-more.com/online...en&cid=1000390

The flight ZRH-TLV is LX4220.

*On selected LX code share flights within the ranges LX4220-LX4239, LX4270-LX4279, LX4600-LX4639 und LX8000-LX8499 you are earning award miles only. Status miles, HON Circle miles and Executive Bonus are not being granted on these flights.