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Gambling, for the most part, is illegal in Israel but as Israelis love to gamble they find a lot of ways to get around it.
The cheapest, and easiest, way is simply to play one of the two state lotteries. Toto is a football lottery and you fill out a "Win, Lose or Draw" ticket for about 20 games each week. Mefal Ha Pais is based solely on the luck of the draw (actually the luck of numbered balls in a turning drum). Mefal Ha Pais also has a large selection of scratch cards.
Tickets for both Toto and Mefal Ha Pais can be bought on almost every city street in the country, but if you don't want to stand in line you can get a subscription and keep the same number for each weekly draw. Your credit card will be automatically debited and any winnings placed in it.
Less common, but still not hard to find, are slot machines. These are allowed in small shops under the fiction that if you win you don't get money but rather credits for things sold in that store. In reality, of course, the store owner will fork over the cash if you win. Apparently, if there are only one or two machines in the store the police don't really care.
There are casinos in Tel Aviv but these are flat-out illegal and I in no way suggest that you go to one. In fact, I don't even know where they are, but many Tel Aviv taxi drivers apparently do.
Gambling cruises, with full casinos on board, leave regularly from Haifa but these are not for the one night player. They go through the Mediterranean, stopping in a number of different European ports before returning to Israel.
The next alternative is a quick trip out of the country. The only casinos which can be reached by land are in Sinai (Egypt). The casino in Taba, just a few meters from the Israeli resort town of Eilat, used to be extremely popular but much of the interest in it cooled off when terrorists blew the casino up. This also took the shine off of the other Sinai casinos as well.
This leaves gambling junkets. Turkey used to be the most popular destination for Israelis as it was the closest and least expensive. When an Islamic party took control of the government, however, it closed all of the casinos. Still, the Greek isles are only a little further away (perhaps 90 minutes by air) and beyond that the casinos of various European cities and, of course, the Holy City for all gamblers -- Las Vegas.
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