The Knesset approved on Monday the first reading of a bill prohibiting the financing of terrorism.
The bill will allow the Ministerial Committee for National Security Affairs to declare a foreign person a terrorist or declare a foreign organization a terrorist organization following a similar declaration by an authorized official of a foreign country.
The bill also allows declaring a person a terrorist if he is associated with an organization that has been declared a terror organization by Israel. The bill also proposes that the Ministerial Committee be allowed to adopt resolutions of the UN Security Council without further conditions.
The explanatory notes to the bill state that sections 1 and 2 of the existing terrorist funding law, which was passed in 2005, limit the Ministerial Committee in declaring a terrorist organization as such or declaring that a foreigner is a terrorist.
“The accumulated experience shows that in some cases, certain restrictions contained in the law hampered the committee, which is then prevented from declaring these organizations or activists as required, even when under the circumstances there is no substantive justification not to declare them as such,” say the bill’s notes.
“This means that for a significant part of such declarations Israel does not meet international standards on the subject,” the notes go on to say. “In the framework of the international audits that are held from time to time, the State of Israel is required to correct existing gaps and continue to improve its compliance with international standards.”
The bill will now be taken to the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee where it will be prepared for its second and third readings.