Online Casinos in Israel

The Legal Position

Online casino play is prohibited in Israel, and the prohibition reaches the player as well as the operator. The State Comptroller of Israel, reporting on illegal internet gambling, states that the Penal Law, 5737-1977 prohibits the organising of prohibited games, lotteries and betting "which may win the participants money, money's worth or a benefit according to results that depend on chance or guessing more than on understanding or ability", and "also prohibits participation in prohibited games as defined in the law". The report calls what falls inside that prohibition "illegal gambling" throughout.

Two things sit outside it, and both are narrow. The first is a permit: the law excludes from the prohibition lotteries and betting for which the Minister of Finance has given prior permission, "among them Mifal HaPayis lotteries". The second is sports betting: the Law for the Regulation of Sports Betting, 5727-1967 permits betting on the results of games and sports competitions "conducted by the Council for the Regulation of Sports Betting". Neither covers casino games, which is why there is no Israeli online casino licence to hold and no Israeli casino regulator to name.

The Two State Monopolies

The Knesset passed the Law for the Regulation of Sports Betting in August 1967, and the Council for the Regulation of Sports Betting was established under it on 1 January 1968. The State Comptroller describes the Council as "exclusively authorised to organise and conduct betting on the results of games and sports competitions", with twelve members appointed by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Education and Culture, half civil servants and half representatives of the sports bodies.

Mifal HaPayis is the lottery side. Reporting in October 2021, the State Comptroller describes it as conducting "lotteries under a permit from the state given to it for the conduct of gambling", directing its profits to local authorities for health, education, welfare, culture and arts projects.

How the Prohibition Applies Online

Israeli enforcement bodies have not treated an offshore server as putting a gambling site beyond the Penal Law. The State Comptroller records legal opinions of the Police and the State Attorney's Office from 2003 and 2005 holding that even where the server is outside the country's borders, the gambling itself takes place at least in part inside Israel on citizens' computers, "and therefore there is nothing to prevent applying to it the criminal provisions dealing with gambling". In January 2007 a magistrates' court held that a company operating a gambling site directed at the Israeli public breaches the Penal Law even if it is registered abroad in a place where gambling is permitted and its server is outside Israel.

The report also records that the Police describe gambling as one of the significant generators of crime in Israel and a central economic branch for criminal organisations.

Payment and Access Measures

Two channels have been targeted. On payments, the State Comptroller records that police warned the credit card companies in 2006, that the Supervisor of Banks took up the matter in mid-2008, and that in 2009 the Supervisor issued a circular to the credit card companies directing them not to approve transactions suspected of being intended for illegal gambling. On access, at the beginning of August 2010 the police sent internet service providers an order not to allow access to seven gambling sites; the providers blocked the addresses and the gambling companies opened others. The report concluded that at the close of the audit in November 2010 most of the money and communication channels remained active.

Help and Treatment

Israeli welfare policy treats gambling as an addictive behaviour: the State Comptroller's report on addictions defines addiction as dependence "on psychoactive substances such as drugs or alcohol, or on a particular behaviour such as gambling". The same report found that as of August 2018, nearly fifteen years after the Ministry of Welfare's Director-General included people suffering from a gambling problem in the addictions service's target population, the service had still not developed a dedicated treatment policy for gambling addiction. For general support, ER"AN offers anonymous emotional first aid by telephone on 1201 and online, and says plainly that its services are "not a substitute for professional treatment".

What Could Not Be Established

Israel's own legislation database could not be read. knesset.gov.il returned a geo-restriction notice and www.gov.il a 403, so the text of the Penal Law and of the Law for the Regulation of Sports Betting is described here through the State Comptroller's own account of it rather than quoted directly, and no Israeli government statement later than 2021 is drawn on. Readers should treat the position as current in substance but check for legislative change at primary source.

What Is Available Instead

Two state monopolies, and nothing else. The State Comptroller records that the only exceptions to the prohibition are gambling for which the Minister of Finance has granted a prior permit — among them Mifal HaPayis lotteries — and sports betting conducted by the Council for the Regulation of Sports Betting, which it describes as exclusively authorised to organise and conduct betting on the results of games and sports competitions. Neither exception covers casino games.