A Different Departure: A Reply to Shany's "Redrawing Maps, Manipulating Demographics: On Exchange of Populated Territories and Self-Determination"

Anyone reading Yuval Shany’s response to my article, “The Blessing of Departure—Exchange of Populated Territories The Lieberman Plan as an Abstract Exercise in Demographic Transformation,” would hardly characterize it as “agreement.” In part this is because Shany builds his case by assuming I am saying something about self-determination that misses—at least misplaces—my real point. This is unfortunate, both as it masks the fact that Shany and I actually agree transfers can be legal, and it distracts attention from the points of real, substantive disagreement. The misreading is not an accident, rather the product of a patterned view. The points of disagreement, center on: whether transfer is a harm per se; whether the presence of a minority affects the state’s power to transfer; whether there is a positive right not to be denationalized; and whether there is a hierarchy of rights.