THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE 47 anyway; the list o f reasons can be extended— and all o f them add up to the insuperable difficulty at present o f conducting such a plebiscite. N evertheless, this is not to say that there are no other means by which, even in their dispersion and exile, the Palestinians could have expressed themselves. Judging by the great popular appeal and legitimacy o f the Palestine Liberation O rganization, by the constant resistance to and refusal of Israeli military rule in the Occupied Territories, by the daily demonstrations, strikes, and political gestures of resistance there and among the Arabs inside pre-1967 Israel, by every mass and private organization creatcd by and for Palestinians, there is ample evidence to show that taken altogether as members o f a com m unity whose common experi­ ence is dispossession, exile, and the absence o f any territorial hom eland, the Palestinian people has not acquiesced in its present lot. Rather the Palestinians have repeatedly insisted on their right o f return, their desire for the exercise o f self­ determ ination, and their stubborn opposition to Zionism as it has affected them. This Palestinian insistence is no unique, decontextualized aberration; it is fully supported by every international legal and moral covenant known to the modern world. A rticle 13 o f the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) stipulates that: 1. Everyone has a right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of cach state. 2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. T he International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights {[966) further affirms these fundamental rights o f people and, since [976, has been accepted as a document carrying the unique force o f a unanimous United Nations G eneral A ssem ­ bly vote (with only five abstentions). Its A rticle 12 states: 2. Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own. . . . 3. No one shall he arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.