Renunciation and remission are not comprehensively treated in the new Israeli legislation. And although the legislature has referred to these terms in the course of its legislation, they are nowhere defined.
The first reference to the terms, chronologically speaking, is in sec. l(c) of the Gift Law, 1968: “A gift may consist in the donor's renunciation of a right against the donee or in the donor's remission of an obligation of the donee towards him”.
In the chapter treating of “Several Debtors and Creditors”, the Contracts (General Part) Law, 1973, provides an enlightening reference to the terms under discussion. Sec. 55(c) states: “If the creditor discharges one of the debtors of the whole or part of the obligation - by way of waiver, remission, compromise or otherwise - the other is discharged to the same extent unless a different intention appears from the discharge”. Thus we have before us a list of terms (renunciation, waiver, remission, compromise, discharge) that often appear in modern codices as factors that terminate a debt by means other than performance.