ISRAELI legal officials were holding a crisis meeting last night over escalating Palestinian demands for financial compensation for victims of the Intifada.
More than a thousand Palestinians were killed, and thousands more injured, in the confrontations with Israeli troops that characterised the Intifada uprising of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and claims for damages, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, have been filed with the Israeli courts.
The Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, is adamant that Israel has no obligation to pay compensation. The Intifada, he says, was "a war imposed on Israel" that has now ended with the success of the Israeli-PLO peace process.
Israel, too, has its own register of complaints against the Palestinians, he said, for Israeli deaths in the Intifada and the wars that preceded it. Just as the Israeli government has given financial assistance to its own citizens, Mr Peres added, it is up to Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority to allocate funds for its people.
The problem for Mr Peres is that his own government's top legal adviser, the Attorney-General, Mr Michael Ben-Yair, fears that the Israeli courts are unlikely to share the prime minister's analysis, and the independent judiciary is likely to take the view that, since Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza for close to 30 years, it must take responsibility for what went on there.
Mr Ben-Yair is proposing that Israel set up a fund for Intifada victims. The Police Minister, Mr Moshe Shahal, meanwhile, suggests that Israel make a one-time full and final payment to the Palestinian Authority, and leave it to Mr Arafat to distribute the money.
The fear in Israel is the demands for Intifada compensation may now he followed by damages claims for West Bank and Gaza land confiscation. And it's not just the Palestinians who could level financial claims against the Israeli government for alleged past wrongdoings.
Earlier this week, another Israeli minister, Mr Shulamit Aloni, acknowledged for the first time that Israel was responsible for the killing of a Moroccan man, Ahmed Bouchiki, in Lillehammer, Norway, 22 years ago.
Israeli Mossad agents had been on the trail of Mr Ali Hassan Salameh, a Palestinian believed to have been behind the killings of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Mr Bouchiki, who was working as a waiter, was misidentified as Mr Salameh, and gunned down.
Members of Mr Bouchiki's family have long sought compensation for the death. Mrs Aloni's admission of Israeli responsibility can only bolster their case.