From the outside, the gambling legislation is Israel looks simple and straight forward. Gambling is banned in the country, according to the Israeli Penal Law 5737 of 1977. But the same law does not address online gambling in any manner. It is leading to much confusion and speculation.
There have been several illegal operators offering online gambling and claiming that it is not illegal. The law regarding this lies in bit of a grey area. In 2005, there were some developments. The then Israeli Attorney General took a stern stance against online gambling when he issued orders that not only mandated the closure of online gambling operators with servers based in Israel, but also penalised credit card companies that processed transactions for such online casino and gambling site operators.
The present situation is ambiguous. Attorneys interpret the law books as severely cracking down on casino gambling with some serious consequences for offenders, while in contradiction allowing sports betting and lottery as being perfectly legal.
Land-based casinos are banned in the country. The ban has resulted in several undercover casinos and gambling tables that operate behind closed doors. Not only are these unregulated and potentially frivolous, but such platforms can be downright dangerous. The gambling ban in Israel has come under some serious criticism of late for precisely such reasons. Not only will the legalisation of casino gambling and gambling games like poker allow for safe, fair and regulated casinos, but it is also a great boost to the economy as it is heavily taxable. In fact, these are exactly the reasons why the ban was lifted in Britain.
British legislators were able to identify that a ban is not effective in stopping gambling, it is instead just forcing gambling underground and the country is also losing out on hundreds of millions (now billions) of pounds of revenue that a legal gambling market would generate every year. In the UK, with respect to sports betting, a 15 per cent tax on all gross profits made by punters has replaced an older betting duty of 6.75 per cent. In January of 2010, the revenue generated from the gambling industry in Britain was extrapolated to be nearly £6 billion which at the time was a staggering 0.5 per cent of the GDP of the United Kingdom. If the copious amounts of money generated is not incentive enough for Israeli law makers to legalise gambling and regulate it closely, then surely, one would think that the fact that the industry in the UK employs and empowers nearly 100,000 people and generates over £700 million in tax revenue would certainly put them over the fence, but remarkably, not so.
Despite the fact that Israel adopted the legal framework of Britain, including the ban on gambling, Israeli gambling laws do not seem to be as dynamic and evolving as its English counter-part. The Israeli laws revolving around gambling and the ban on casinos and games like poker are archaic in this day and age to say the least.
Will Israel follow in the footsteps of Britain, from whom they adopted the gambling ban, and lift the ban? Only time will tell, but at this point, they seem to be in no hurry to do so.
Source: Jerusalem Post / LEO GIOSUÈ
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