In May'94 , At a ceremony in Cairo, Egypt, attended by 2,500 guests, Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, signed the final version of the Declaration of Principles that had been signed in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13, 1993.

The accord was regarded as a start toward bringing peace between Israelis and Palestinians after 45 years of conflict. Within 24 hours of the signing, Israeli military forces were scheduled to leave the Gaza Strip and Jericho, ending 27 years of occupation of those territories. A Palestinian police force was ready to move into the areas to keep order. Among the foreign visitors at the ceremony were Secretary of State Warren Christopher of the United States, Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev of Russia, and Foreign Minister Koji Kazikawa of Japan. In spite of the accord, Jewish and Palestinian extremists in Israel vowed to prevent its full implementation.