Website terms of use in Israel: what binds the user, what a court will strike out, and what you must not write

Internet Law · October 21, 2026 · 9 min read

The short answer

Nothing in Israeli law requires a website to publish “terms”. What is mandatory is content: a business selling online must disclose to the consumer the particulars in section 14C of the Consumer Protection Law, 5741-1981, place a dedicated cancellation link on its home page under section 14I(b) of that Law, and quote a total price in shekels only under section 17D; and any site collecting personal data must give a notice under section 11 of the Protection of Privacy Law, 5741-1981. Terms of use are a standard contract within the meaning of the Standard Contracts Law, 5743-1982, so a court may strike out or modify any unfair term in them, and a series of common clauses – a blanket exemption from liability, a unilateral price change, compulsory arbitration, a declaration that the user “has read and understood” – is presumed unfair under section 4 of that Law. A foreign forum clause was struck out by the Supreme Court in Ben Hamo (2018), and in Agoda (2024) the Court held that a foreign choice-of-law clause likewise cannot displace mandatory consumer-protection provisions. Above all: terms the user did not accept actively are hard to prove binding at all.

1. Must a website publish terms?

No. No statute provides that a website must have “terms”, and a site that sells nothing and collects no personal data needs none at all. The duties that apply to a business selling online are duties of disclosure, and the terms document is the convenient place to meet some of them:

• Distance-selling disclosure. Section 14C(a) of the Consumer Protection Law requires disclosure to the consumer of, “at least”, the business’s name, identification number and address, the main features of the goods or service, the price and payment terms, the time and manner of supply, the validity of the offer, and particulars of warranty and of the right of cancellation; section 14C(b) adds a written document no later than the time of supply.
• The right of cancellation and the home-page link. A consumer may cancel a distance sale within fourteen days (section 14C(c) of the Consumer Protection Law), and the cancellation fee is capped at 5 per cent of the transaction price or ILS 100, whichever is lower (section 14E(b)). Section 14I(b), added by Amendment No. 52 of 2017, requires a business with which a transaction can be concluded online to create “on the home page of its website a dedicated link” for sending a cancellation notice, “placed prominently and clearly”.
• Total price in shekels. Section 17D of the Consumer Protection Law prohibits quoting a price “unless it is the total price only and solely in Israeli currency”.
• Privacy notice. A request to a person for personal data for processing in a database is accompanied by a notice under section 11 of the Protection of Privacy Law. That is a separate document, dealt with in the article on privacy policies.

All of these apply towards a “consumer” – “a person who buys an asset or receives a service from a dealer in the course of the dealer’s business, for use that is mainly personal, domestic or family” (section 1 of the Consumer Protection Law). Sections 14C–14I of the Consumer Protection Law do not apply to a site selling only to businesses, but the Standard Contracts Law, the Protection of Privacy Law and the Service Accessibility Regulations still do.

2. How online terms become a contract

Terms of use bind the user only if the user agreed to them. Two models are usually distinguished: under clickwrap the user performs an active step – ticking a box or clicking an “I agree” button – after the text has been made available; under browsewrap the terms sit behind a link at the foot of the page, and the site announces that browsing itself constitutes agreement.

The available Israeli sources support the first model. In Agoda (LCA 6992/22, 27 May 2024) the Supreme Court described terms of use “to which every user making a booking is required to agree”. The Privacy Protection Authority, in its opinion on consent in privacy law (25 February 2026), wrote that “clicking an ‘I agree’ button at the foot of a terms-of-use document when downloading an app constitutes express consent to the terms of use, including the terms concerning the collection and use of personal data” – adding that a long and inaccessible document may fail to ground informed consent, and that the operator should be able to prove the consent, for example by preserving the screens shown to the user.

By contrast, we have not located a Supreme Court ruling recognising as binding terms that the user was never asked to approve. Whoever seeks to enforce browsewrap terms must prove that the user knew of them and agreed – a heavy burden when the link is small and nobody is required to open it. Nor can this be circumvented by a declaration: section 4(12) of the Standard Contracts Law presumes unfair “a term under which the customer is required to confirm or declare that he has read the contract”. Our conclusion: browsewrap is suitable at most for notices that do not bind the user – copyright, a pointer to the privacy policy; any term meant to bind – a waiver, a limitation of liability, a licence in content, a forum clause – needs active acceptance, with the full text available before the click, the version logged, and a material change accompanied by renewed acceptance.

3. The Standard Contracts Law: the presumptions and the void terms

Section 2 of the Standard Contracts Law defines a “standard contract” as “the text of a contract whose terms, in whole or in part, were fixed in advance by one party so as to serve as terms for many contracts between it and persons unspecified in number or identity”. Section 3 empowers the court and the Standard Contracts Tribunal to strike out or modify an unfair term, “having regard to the contract as a whole and to other circumstances”; section 4 lists terms presumed to be unfair – the burden shifts to the supplier – and section 5 sets out terms that are void outright.

The usual clause	The provision of the Standard Contracts Law	What survives
“The service is provided AS IS, and the company bears no liability for any damage”	Section 4(1) – exemption from liability imposed by law, or an unreasonable limitation of contractual liability; section 5(b) – an exemption from liability for bodily injury or a malicious act is void	A proportionate limitation – a cap tied to the consideration, an exclusion of indirect loss – that does not touch bodily injury or malice
“The company may change the service, the price or the terms at any time at its discretion”	Section 4(2) – an unreasonable right to cancel, suspend or change material obligations; section 4(4) – a price change at the supplier’s sole discretion, “unless the change results from factors beyond the supplier’s control”	Change on advance notice with a right for the customer to terminate without penalty; a price change driven by a defined external factor
“The company may assign its obligations to any third party”	Section 4(3) – transfer of the supplier’s liability to a third party	Assignment to an affiliate or on a sale of the business, with liability retained or a right of termination for the customer
“The sole remedy is to stop using the service”	Section 4(6) – denial or limitation of a statutory right or remedy	A complaints-and-cure procedure as a first step, without excluding statutory remedies
“For any breach the user shall pay liquidated damages of …”	Section 4(6a) – a remedy not available to the supplier by law, including unreasonable liquidated damages	Liquidated damages reasonable in relation to the foreseeable loss
“The burden is on the user to prove that …”	Section 4(7) – shifting the burden of proof onto the customer	None; the burdens remain as the law sets them
“All disputes shall be resolved exclusively by arbitration”	Section 4(8) – arbitration of every dispute; section 4(10) – arbitration over whose terms the supplier has greater influence; section 5(a) – denial or limitation of recourse to the courts is void	Arbitration as an option at the customer’s election; mediation as a preliminary step
“Exclusive jurisdiction is vested in the courts of …”	Section 4(9) – derogation from statutory provisions on venue, or an exclusive right for the supplier to choose it	Venue in Israel; against Israeli consumers a foreign forum clause does not stand (see section 4)
“The user declares that he has read the terms, understood them and agrees to them”	Section 4(12) – requiring the customer to confirm or declare that he has read the contract	An active, logged act of acceptance in place of a declaration in the text

Review takes place in a concrete dispute under section 19 of the Standard Contracts Law, or before the Standard Contracts Tribunal under section 16, on the application of the Attorney General, the Consumer Protection Commissioner or a customers’ organisation, among others; the Tribunal’s ruling also applies to other standard contracts of that supplier which the Tribunal finds to be similar in substance (section 18).

4. Forum and governing-law clauses: Ben Hamo and Agoda

Ben Hamo (2018). LCA 5860/16 Facebook Inc. v. Ben Hamo (31 May 2018) concerned a clause in Facebook’s terms of use under which every dispute would be heard in a court in California, under California law. The Court held that the forum clause was “a term derogating from a statutory provision on venue” within the meaning of section 4(9) of the Standard Contracts Law and therefore raised a presumption of unfairness; Facebook did not rebut the presumption, among other reasons because “most Facebook users do not have the means or the knowledge to conduct litigation in California”, and the clause was struck out. The choice-of-law clause was left standing on the facts of that case, with Deputy President Melcer remarking that it must not be used to “circumvent” mandatory provisions of Israeli law, consumer-protection law among them.

Agoda (2024). LCA 6992/22 Agoda Company Pte. Ltd. v. Tzvia (27 May 2024; Justices Vilner, Grosskopf and Ronen) concerned the terms of use of a hotel-booking platform with a Hebrew interface, which referred to the law and the courts of Singapore. The Court noted that the invalidity of such a foreign forum clause “is well known and not in dispute” since Ben Hamo, and that leaving it in the Hebrew terms “may in itself constitute a deception of its customers”. On choice of law the Court held unanimously that a foreign choice-of-law clause cannot displace mandatory statutory provisions whose purpose is consumer protection – section 17D of the Consumer Protection Law among them – where Israeli law applies to the dispute under the choice-of-law rules. Justice Grosskopf, joined by Justice Ronen, added a second ground: in relations between global corporations and “small customers (private consumers and micro-businesses)” such a clause is “unfair by definition”, without the customer having to prove that the foreign law is itself unfair. Justice Vilner agreed with the result but declined to lay down a sweeping rule, noting that such a determination “is better suited to legislation or regulatory provisions”. The Ben Hamo ruling on choice of law was thus confined.

The drafting conclusion: a site addressing Israeli consumers provides for venue in Israel and Israeli law. Any other clause will not only go unenforced; it may itself serve as a cause of action in a class action.

5. What consumer law does not allow you to write

The provisions of the Consumer Protection Law are mandatory, and a clause that contradicts them has no effect against the consumer – and is often also an unfair term under section 4(6) of the Standard Contracts Law, because it denies a statutory right. In practice we mostly meet these:

• “A transaction cannot be cancelled once made” – contrary to section 14C(c) of the Consumer Protection Law. Section 2(b2) of that Law prohibits telling a consumer that he has no right of cancellation without the qualification set in the Law, and the breach is among those for which a financial sanction may be imposed under section 22C(a).
• “A cancellation fee of 20 per cent” or “shipping costs are non-refundable” – contrary to section 14E(b) of the Consumer Protection Law, which caps the cancellation fee at 5 per cent or ILS 100, whichever is lower, and to section 14E(d), under which the cancellation fee includes shipping and packaging costs.
• “Prices exclude VAT”, or prices in a foreign currency only – contrary to section 17D of the Consumer Protection Law, as applied in Agoda.
• Cancellation by registered mail only – contrary to section 14I(a) of the Consumer Protection Law, which lists the cancellation channels the business must allow, among them telephone, e-mail and the internet.

The sanction is not only that the clause has no effect: financial sanctions under section 22C of the Consumer Protection Law, and exemplary damages without proof of loss under section 31A of that Law on the causes it lists.

6. User content and intellectual property

A site that lets users upload content needs a licence from them, since copyright remains with the author; without one the site may not display or transfer the content, and certainly may not use it for purposes other than the service itself. Two points: first, user content is often also personal data. The Privacy Protection Authority made clear in its opinion on consent that consent to the use of data for purposes materially different from the purpose of the agreement – including profiling not needed for the service – must be given “in the form of separate active consent”, and in its draft guideline on artificial-intelligence systems (April 2025) it wrote that, as a rule, consent to mining the data cannot be inferred from posting content on a social network. A defined, purpose-limited licence is therefore a proprietary instrument and a privacy instrument too. Second, under regulation 35B of the Equal Rights for Persons with Disabilities Regulations (Service Accessibility Adjustments), 5773-2013, the site owner is not responsible for the accessibility of content it did not edit or produce, but must provide an accessible infrastructure for uploading it – see the article on website accessibility.

Alongside the licence, the terms of use are the place for acceptable-use rules, a notice-and-takedown mechanism, and a reservation of the site’s own intellectual property. Confidentiality undertakings by business users are better handled in a separate document; see the NDA guide.

7. Version control and renewed acceptance

A change that was not agreed does not bind. Sections 4(2) and 4(4) of the Standard Contracts Law presume unfair a change of material obligations or of the price at the supplier’s sole discretion, and the Privacy Protection Authority stated in its opinion on consent that a material change in terms requires renewed consent. Therefore: every version carries a number and a commencement date; earlier versions are retained; for every registered user the date of acceptance and the version accepted are logged; a material change – in price, in the scope of the licence, in the use of data, in venue – is presented to the user and requires a fresh click, not merely an e-mail; and a non-material change is published in advance with a commencement date.

8. A note on B2B SaaS

The definition of “customer” in section 2 of the Standard Contracts Law – “a person to whom a supplier proposes that their engagement be under a standard contract” – is not limited to consumers. The terms of a software service that businesses accept by clicking are a standard contract, and the section 4 presumptions apply to them. The difference lies in the weight: section 3 directs the court to assess unfairness “having regard to the contract as a whole and to other circumstances”, and in Agoda the imbalance of power was stressed specifically towards “small customers”. A limitation of liability that would fall against a consumer may stand against a sophisticated business customer. The Consumer Protection Law does not apply at all where the customer is not a “consumer”; conversely, a negotiated agreement is not a standard contract, since its terms were not “fixed in advance by one party”. For companies at the formation stage see company formation at the firm; for an overview of the four documents a website and an app need – the service page.

Frequently asked questions

Is a website legally required to publish terms of use?

No. No statute requires a website to publish “terms”. What is mandatory is content: disclosure of the particulars in section 14C of the Consumer Protection Law, a cancellation link on the home page under section 14I(b) of that Law, a total price in shekels under section 17D, and a privacy notice under section 11 of the Protection of Privacy Law.

Is a link to the terms in the page footer enough to bind the user?

Very doubtful. Whoever seeks to enforce terms the user was never asked to accept must prove that the user knew of them and agreed. The Privacy Protection Authority noted in its opinion on consent (25 February 2026) that clicking an “I agree” button is express consent to the terms, and that the site operator should be able to prove it.

Can the terms provide for foreign law and a foreign forum?

Not against Israeli consumers. In Ben Hamo (LCA 5860/16, 31 May 2018) a foreign forum clause was struck out as an unfair term under section 4(9) of the Standard Contracts Law, and in Agoda (LCA 6992/22, 27 May 2024) the Court held that a foreign choice-of-law clause cannot displace mandatory consumer-protection provisions where Israeli law applies.

May we write that the site is not liable for any damage?

You may write it, but the clause will not stand as written. Section 4(1) of the Standard Contracts Law presumes unfair a term exempting the supplier from liability imposed by law or unreasonably limiting its contractual liability, and section 5(b) provides that an exemption from liability for bodily injury or a malicious act is void. A proportionate limitation has a better chance of surviving, particularly against business customers.

Are the terms of a B2B SaaS service subject to the Standard Contracts Law?

Yes. A “customer” is defined in section 2 of the Standard Contracts Law without limitation to consumers, so terms a business accepts by clicking are a standard contract. Section 3, however, directs the court to assess unfairness in light of all the circumstances, and the imbalance of power against a business customer is smaller. The Consumer Protection Law does not apply where the customer is not a “consumer”.

How are terms of use changed in a binding way?

A change that was not agreed does not bind. Sections 4(2) and 4(4) of the Standard Contracts Law presume unfair a unilateral change of material obligations or of the price, and the Privacy Protection Authority has stated that a material change in terms requires renewed consent. In practice: a version number and commencement date, retention of earlier versions, a log of each user’s acceptance, and a fresh click on every material change.

The above is general information on Israeli law only, current as of the date of publication, and does not constitute legal advice or a substitute for advice on your specific circumstances. Sanction and damages figures are those set in the legislation and in the authorities’ publications at the date of publication and are updated from time to time. Consult a lawyer before acting.

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