My first meeting with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat while Israel’s deputy foreign minister took place in Tunis a month after the signing of the Oslo Accords at the White House in September 1993. Part of the conversation took place in the presence of officials from both sides, and part of it one-on-one. It started at 10:00 p.m. in the evening and continued on into the night.

Among the topics Arafat raised were the payments to families of Palestinian casualties from the conflict with Israel and Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Arafat said that the PLO would have to continue to depend on donations for them, because it was clear to him that the World Bank would not be able, as a matter of principle, to fund such payments.

I had not known about the payments, and when Arafat turned my attention to the issue, I said that even if it were not a matter of funding terrorism, it was clear that such funds could encourage young people to take risks and even sacrifice themselves for the sake of their families. Arafat's response was that he hoped the problem would be resolved within the framework of a peace agreement, since there would supposedly no longer be prisoners. In the meantime, however, ending the payments would mean the end of the PLO. In other words, the Palestinian street would never accept discontinuing the payments.

Every Israeli government of the past 26 years, including the four led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had accepted the situation. Although they didn’t like it, they understood the significance of ending the payments. Then in July 2018, the Knesset passed a populist law introduced by Avi Dichter (Likud) and Elazer Stern (Yesh Atid) to deduct the corresponding amounts paid to prisoners and their families from the tax receipts Israel collects and transfers to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The measure passed with a huge majority and ignored Netanyahu’s desperate attempt to add a clause granting the Cabinet discretion in implementing it. The law explicitly violates agreements with the Palestinians, according to which Israel does not have the right to treat Palestinian customs revenue as if it were its own, aside from the considerable 3% it keeps as a fee for handling the money.