Knesset approves bill allowing police to block websites

Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, approved in its second and third readings a bill on Monday authorising the police to order restricted access to websites which oppose the government’s policies, Quds Press has reported.

According to Israeli news website Ynet News, the restrictions would target those websites which provide and encourage or perpetrate criminal offences, such as prostitution, drug dealing, gambling and incitement. However, Israeli officials always refer to Palestinian news websites which report the resistance against the military occupation as “inciting” people against Israel and Israeli citizens. It is these sites, said Haaretz, which the law is targeting.

Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked initiated the law, which gives the Israeli police the power to block any websites based within and outside Israel, as well as to work on removing them from search engines.

“The internet has become a space that touches the lives of the citizens and exploits them,” Shaked is reported to have said. “The duty of the government is to control this space.”

Read: Israel approves bill to block websites

Erdan said after the vote that, “Today we corrected a deficiency in enforcement that has been around for years, years in which the existing law was unable to deal with the trend of crime transitioning to the online space.” He emphasised that both he and Shaked had fought in recent months to promote the law, in order to give the police the tools and authority needed to take down sites that endanger the public.

This law follows in the wake of a bill allowing Israeli courts to issue orders to delete all social media posts that are considered to be “incitement” against Israel.