T H E y i 'E S T I O N O F P A L E S T IN E In addition. the UN Commission on Human Rights asseverates that: a. Everyone is entitled, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, marriage or other status, to return to his country. b. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality or forced to renounce his nationality as a means of divesting him of the right to return to his country , c. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country, d. No one shall be denied the right to return to his own country on the ground that he has no passport or other travel document.SJ Most arguments attempting to refute these, to Palestinians at least, clear determinations have concentrated on a limited set o f arguments. If the Palestinians left in 1948, wc are told, they did so because the A rab states urged them to do so in order that after a boasted victory, they could return in triumph. My own experience and all the evidence suggests that the conclu­ sive reason for the A rab Palestinian exodus in 1948 was a different one. But so far as the true argument about Palestinian right o f return is concerned, the reason for the flight of the Palestinians is finally irrelevant. What matters is that they are entitled to return, as international law stipulates, as numerous United Nations resolutions (voted for by the United States) have averred, and as they themselves have willed. (The first UN General Assem bly resolution— Num ber 194— affirming the right o f Palestinians to return to their homes and property, was passed on Decem ber 11. 1948, It has been repassed no less than twenty-eight times since that first date.) W hereas the moral and political right of a person to return to his place of uninterrupted residence is acknowledged everyw here, Israel has negated the possibility of return, first by a series o f laws declaring Arab-owned land in Palestine absentee property, and hence liable to expropriation by the Jewish National Fund (which legally owns the land in Israel "fo r the whole Jewish