In January 1996, I was dispatched by the Japanese government to observe the election of the Palestine Council and the president of the Palestinian Authority. Because Palestine was still under Israeli occupation, it was not a sovereign state: Sending international observers to such a region was unprecedented. It grew out of common interests shared by the Palestinians, who hoped to make the elections a step toward their independence, and by European countries and the United States, as well as Japan, who sought to support them.

Nevertheless, the Palestinian declaration of the statehood, which had been scheduled for May this year, has been delayed pending further negotiations.

It is fortunate that hopes for progress in the peace process have been rising since Prime Minister Ehud Barak of the Labor Party was elected in May to head the Israeli government. On Sept. 5, Barak met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and agreed to resume talks on the final status of Palestine and to seek to reach agreement within a year. In the following month, the two leaders met with U.S. President Bill Clinton in Oslo, Norway, and confirmed that agreement on the outline would be worked out by Feb. 13 next year.