Will women have to register for the draft?

Now that the Pentagon is lifting its ban on women in combat, does this mean that women could potentially be drafted, too?

And as a practical matter: When women turn 18, will they now need to register, as men do, so that they can be conscripted in the event of a World War III, or any military emergency where the US government decides it needs troops quickly?

It?s a thorny question, raising what may be a difficult prospect societally. But the legal implications are obvious, analysts argue.

RECOMMENDED: Are you smarter than a US Marine? Take the recruitment quiz

?The answer to that question is clearly yes,? says Anne Coughlin, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. ?The legal argument is clear: If it comes to that kind of wrenching emergency where we have to press young people into service, there is no legal justification for saying that men alone need to shoulder that burden.?

The wars of the past decade in Iraq and Afghanistan have been fought by an all-volunteer force, since the US military discontinued the draft in 1973. Males between the ages of 18 and 25, however, are still required to register for the Selective Service.

Once the combat exclusion policy is lifted, ?My belief is that if we open up combat arms to women, even on a voluntary basis, if there is a draft, we should be able to force women into those positions,? says retired Col. Peter Mansoor, a professor of military history at the Ohio State University in Columbus and a former US Army brigade commander who served two tours in Iraq.

Get our FREE 2013 Global Security Forecast now

?If women are acceptable to serve in combat, they are acceptable to serve whether they volunteer or not. You can?t have the frosting on the cake and not the cake underneath,? he says.

Legal precedent backs this up, adds Professor Coughlin, who has advised plaintiffs in lawsuits to overturn the Pentagon?s combat exclusion policy ? in particular a US Supreme Court case in 1981, Rostker v. Goldberg. In that suit, men argued that the draft is unconstitutional because only men are required by law to register. The Supreme Court rejected the premise of lawsuit.

?The court ruled that the Selective Service process is designed to assemble combat-ready people, and right now women are excluded from combat arms,? Coughlin says. ?Therefore they can?t participate in the very thing that the draft is for. Hence, it?s appropriate and constitutional to continue to exclude women from the draft.?

Yet in overturning combat exclusion for women, ?The male-only draft falls as well, no question about it,? she adds.

Critics of women in combat argue that culturally, the prospect of women being drafted might make the country reluctant to go to war.

To that, Professor Mansoor says, ?It should be: That?s exactly the debate the country needs to have.?

But while the notion of women being drafted ?may add some measure of hesitancy to the decision, I don?t see it as swinging the decision,? he says.

Even so, ?Congress and the president should agonize over going to war. Questions of war should be difficult,? Mansoor adds. ?They should not be as easy as they?ve been in the past 10 years.?

RECOMMENDED: Are you smarter than a US Marine? Take the recruitment quiz

Related stories

Read this story at csmonitor.com

Become a part of the Monitor community

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/women-combat-register-draft-225900518.html

nicole richie lyme disease symptoms esperanza spalding jessica sanchez robert kennedy cardinals san diego weather

pacifirelas: home technology: USAID Research Grants | kaatun88

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://kaatun88.blogspot.com/2013/01/pacifirelas-home-technology-usaid.html

china gdp dont trust the b in apartment 23 johnny damon kirk cameron news 10 hillary rosen j.k. rowling

Raw results: Ziggler beats the clock, The Shield drops The Rock and Cena rumbles with the locker room

All WWE programming, talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, wrestling moves, trademarks, logos and copyrights are the exclusive property of WWE, Inc. and its subsidiaries. All other trademarks, logos and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. ? 2012 WWE, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This website is based in the United States. By submitting personal information to this website you consent to your information being maintained in the U.S., subject to applicable U.S. laws. U.S. law may be different than the law of your home country. WrestleMania XXIX (NY/NJ) logo TM & ? 2012 WWE. All Rights Reserved. The Empire State Building design is a registered trademark and used with permission by ESBC.

Source: http://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/2013-01-21/wwe-raw-results

Nadia Comaneci Rebecca Soni Snoop Lion London 2012 Table Tennis badminton Dominique Dawes Gabby Olympic Gymnast

What Obama Wants and What Congress Will Give Him

President Obama offered a passionate defense of a progressive agenda in his inaugural address Monday, laying out the legislative priorities for the next four years that will likely be echoed in his State of the Union address next month. That includes unfinished business from his first term, such as immigration (which has a future in Congress) and climate change (which doesn?t). There was a pledge to protect the rights of gay citizens to marry (which may be decided by the Supreme Court) and to reduce the waiting time to vote (which may be decided by the states).

The people who hold the key to the president?s vision are the members of Congress with whom he will have to work. Here?s a look at how they might respond to his legislative proposals:

Climate change and sustainable energy: ?We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,? Obama said, rehashing failed pieces of his first-term agenda. ?Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms," he added. Obama tried to push a sweeping cap-and-trade climate bill through Congress in his first term, but it died in the Senate in 2010. Since then, cap-and-trade has become politically toxic and is considered dead on arrival in Congress. The only way Obama could take action would be by using his executive authority to roll out controversial environmental regulations that would cut carbon pollution from existing coal plants. But that would generate massive push-back from industry and Environmental Protection Agency critics on Capitol Hill. At least Obama acknowledged that the path to sustainable energy ?will be long and sometimes difficult.?

Immigration reform: The president has made no secret of the fact that he is going to make comprehensive immigration reform a top priority of his second term. There is some bipartisan support, especially in the Senate, for legislation, but several sticking points remain. Lawmakers disagree on whether there should be a path to citizenship or merely legal status for illegal immigrants, and whether it should be presented as a comprehensive bill or several smaller pieces of legislation. And for immigration reform to pass in the House, Speaker John Boehner might have to violate the Hastert rule and bring legislation to the floor without the majority backing of his conference. Obama voiced support for one specific policy, arguing that immigration reform would be incomplete ?until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.? Easing the path to citizenship for high-skilled workers enjoys broad bipartisan support in the House and Senate, but will get caught up in the debate about the size of legislation.

Equal pay for women:??For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts,? Obama said Monday. In 2009 Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, and with so much else on the agenda now, it?s hard to imagine the president expending much more energy on this issue in the next four years, let alone Congress. To wit, Republicans?last year blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have beefed up protections for women in the workplace. The law has long been considered problematic in the business community because it would open employers up to lawsuits for situations that may not be well defined, like the definition of "fair pay."

Voting reform: Obama said that the country?s ?journey? would not be complete "until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.? It?s also a pledge he made during his acceptance speech on election night, telling the voters who waited in long lines that ?we have to fix that.? But the president is largely powerless to invoke change on this issue because the nitty-gritty of the voting process is the jurisdiction of state and local governments. Although some Democrats, including Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Chris Coons of Delaware, introduced legislation to address long wait times, those efforts are likely to be blocked by a generation of Republicans elected on the promise to protect the 10^th Amendment and states? rights.

Gay rights: Obama said that his work would not be complete ?until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law -- for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.? The administration will go head-to-head with Congress this year on the issue of gay marriage. Nearly two years ago, Obama ordered the Justice Department to stop defending the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Boehner announced shortly thereafter that the House of Representatives would take up defense of the law. A lawsuit, United States v. Windsor,has made its way to the Supreme Court, which has scheduled arguments for March. An affirmation of the administration?s position could pave the way for Obama to move more aggressively on gay marriage, which he now supports. If the courts do not back up his decision to no longer defend DOMA, he is unlikely to get sufficient support from Congress to repeal the law. Any further efforts to boost workplace protections for gays and lesbians in discrimination statutes have been blocked in Congress so far.

Unspoken agenda:?The irony is that Obama spent more time talking about issues he will have a hard time moving the needle on than the issues sitting on his near-term agenda. Among them, several more rounds of fiscal battles that threaten to crowd out Obama?s second-term agenda won only passing reference.?Obama said, ?We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit? before defending Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as commitments that strengthen the country. He offered perhaps one hint the he could be more likely to cut Medicare than insurance subsidies when he said, ?we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.?

Also absent from Obama?s remarks was any mention of guns, although he did say that Americans' won?t be complete until all children, including those from Newtown, know they are cared for. Education and investments in infrastructure similarly got short shrift, and health reform received no explicit shout-out even though its implementation is likely to be among the most significant changes that occur during his second term.

One word that could dominate the first 100 days of Obama?s second term was not even mentioned once: debt.?

?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-wants-congress-him-134649948--politics.html

guernsey nit colcannon dystonia tourettes gonzaga rosie o donnell

Obama Inauguration Speech 2013 Video: President Starts Second Term With Public Address

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the Budget Committee, was not impressed with President Obama's claim in his inaugural address that the country's entitlement programs "do not make us a nation of takers."

The line was a reference to the election campaign in which Mitt Romney infamously said that he was not campaigning for the 47 percent of people who don't pay federal taxes, and in which he accused Obama of trying to "gut" the 1990's welfare reforms.

Sessions, who largely agreed with Romney's positions, took that line and others as a sign that the president will not take steps to curb the costs of Social Security, Medicare and other expensive programs.

"They ran all the way to Election Day campaigning, attacking Republicans who 'want to take your Social Security,' and it was successful," said Sessions just after the inaugural ceremony.

"He's gotten reelected, the country's still on an unsustainable debt path," said Sessions. "If he says 'No,' we probably won't have any entitlement reform, and he can put it on his tombstone that he refused to alter Social Security and Medicare and put either one of them on a sustainable course."

Obama has proposed trimming an additional $300 billion to $400 billion from health care programs, and has floated the possibility of shifting to a stingier measure of inflation to slow the growth of Social Security. Sessions estimates the move would cut $250 billion over 10 years, which he said is not enough.

"You want my opinion about the president's greatest failing of all, that dwarfs every other failing -- he will not tell the American people we are on an unsustainable course, and we have to change," Sessions said.

He found the "takers" line in Obama's speech revealing.

"I would say they're a little sensitive about it," Sessions said. "Because we're on a path to spend about $10 trillion on social programs the next 10 years, $60,000 per family that's below the poverty line -- that's how much we spend for these means-tested programs. And there is a danger of dependency. To be honest, the president should recognize that."

The debate over welfare and the 47 percent played out against the background of an economy that has created the greatest level of income equality in America since before the Great Depression -- a fact Obama took notice of in his remarks.

"We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few," Obama said. "We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us at any time may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great."

-- Michael McAuliff

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/21/obama-inauguration-speech-2013-video_n_2491812.html

lsu vs alabama university of alabama national championship game bcs game joe biden jennifer lawrence

How your business SHOULD HAVE approached mobile in 2012

This one is going to be short, sweet, and to the point.

2012 was the year mobile exploded locally and if you didn?t get involved with mobile then you should definitely start.

I?ve been writing about mobile for a while now so I?ll share with you some posts that are still relevant. Consideration to go mobile is a simply a series of triggers ? hopefully what I share with you now will get you moving if you haven?t already!

In the past week there have been so many developments in the mobile space that I am unable to keep up with all the news streaming into my RSS reader, Google+ Sparks and Twitter lists. In particular, I was captivated by three articles written about the fact that mobile commerce is on the rise.

The first article I read on the subject came from Power Retail, which shared that 66% of U.S shoppers ventured into a physical store to review a product themselves before purchasing it online for a lower price, and about 78% of these actually made the purchase from their smartphone! When was the last time you did something similar? Probably just on the last purchase you made!

Next up was an AdNews article discussing information from the Digital Life 2011 Report that was presented at the 2011 Digital Next Australia conference. This conference was a collaboration between Google, WPP agencies Hill & Knowlton, TNS, GPY&R and Group M, who are all heavyweights in the digital marketing space. The report found that in comparison to 2010, Australians are spending 16% more time shopping online. On top of that, 36% of Australians are now spending more time interacting online via forums, social networks and blogs than they were last year. This should not come as much surprise to those of us who regularly travel by public transport ? provided we look up from our smartphones every now and then to watch our fellow mobile-engrossed commuters contributing to that 36% increase.

Last but not least, Gartner, a well renown technological research company has forecast that by 2015, companies will be generating 50% of their revenue from online sales, mobile applications, and social media channels. That is a sizable portion of any company?s revenue! And to think that it will be coming from your online store, either via traditional e-commerce or on the back of the m-commerce revolution.

Now if you piece all of the above together, you will soon figure out where the direction of commerce for retailers is heading, so as a business you need to know where to capture your target market. Thankfully, Commonwealth Bank is poised to make going mobile easier for both businesses and consumers, having just released news of their new app Kaching. Available for download any day now, this smartphone app will help consumers buy your products online quickly, easily, and mobilely.

Mobile technology represents exciting opportunities for businesses to grow their revenue. The mobile device is a personal item that a large proportion of our population carry and is one of the primary means of connecting with one another ? so why not also allow them to connect with your business? As technology evolves and consumers are holding more power in their hands, your business needs to also evolve to ensure that it survives and thrives.

If you?ve come to the end of this post, and still haven?t considered an mobile online store, a mobile website or a mobile application, consider this ? how much in lost revenue are you willing to pass up before your business goes mobile?

Is it the right move for you?

The below was originally posted on www.mobilemediamarketing.com.au

With the marketing community trending towards the mobile channel for ways to target consumers, as a business owner or manager you must be wondering whether or not your business needs to head down this path as well. Is it worth investing time and money? What if it doesn?t work? Where do I start?

Start with a mobile friendly website.

It?s as true as it ever was that you must go where the consumers are in order to capture their attention. Cast your mind back to when you got your business online, got yourself a website. What were the main reasons? Were any of the list below part of the equation?

1. Statistics showed consumers were starting to use the internet more
2. Your competitors had websites
3. Customers started asking if they could find more information online
4. Access to the internet was becoming more widely available

If you answered yes to any of the above then today you should be asking yourself the same questions, except this time in the context of a mobile friendly website.

1. Do statistics show consumers using the internet via their mobile devices more?
2. Do my competitors have mobile websites?
3. Are more and more consumers looking for information on my website via mobile devices?
4. Are there going to be more mobile devices owned with internet access in the future?

Here are some pertinent statistics to get you started:

1. 78% of shoppers surveyed have looked instore but purchased online from a competitor using their smart phone (www.powerretail.com.au)
2. Smartphone market penetration is highest in Australia at 37%, with Singapore behind in second place (Google ThinkMobile 2011, Sydney)
3. 66% of local searches are from a mobile device ? half of these searches result in an action (Google ThinkMobile 2011, Sydney)

Regarding question 2, investigative work will help you find out whether or not your competitors have a mobile friendly website. For question 3, use your website analytics ? just filter out the visitors to see if there is an increase in mobile visitors over time.

One last point. It?s imperative that you do set some goals and objectives for your business before committing to a mobile website for the sake of it. The last thing you want to do is invest time and money into it and regret it because it hasn?t generated any ROI. Every investment should have a perceived future value, otherwise you might as well save yourself the time and money.

Are you planning on going mobile any time soon?

OK you?ve decided to make the move so you stop missing out, now what can you do?

Though Mobile Marketing is still a relatively young industry, there are two rules of thumb that you should always consider when creating a mobile website:

1. What are users trying to achieve when they are searching on their mobile devices?
2. How much time do you think they have if they are searching in this way?

Thinking about the likely answers to these questions, it quickly becomes apparent that mobile users are looking for information on the go, and they want it fast. Whether finding out the best place to shop for a bargain, where to eat, train timetables, or even the weather, mobile users are defined by their readiness to take action.

SEE ALSO: 10 Million More Reasons to Build Your Site for Mobile Devices

But the implications of Mobile Marketing don?t stop there. You also need to think about how mobile websites can be used to increase your online visibility via SEO ranking factors, and how to enhance the mobile user experience. By covering your bases, you stand a better chance of not only attracting mobile visitors, but impressing them enough that they come back time and again.

Ranking Factors

1. Sitemaps ? Submit the sitemap for the mobile version of your website to major search engines. Google has two crawlers: Googlebot for traditional desktop sites, and Mobile-Googlebot for mobile specific sites. Being included in one index doesn?t necessarily guarantee you?ll be found in the other.

2. Images and video ? Though images and video can engage desktop users, mobile users are a different breed. Overloading your mobile site with content that takes a long time to load will frustrate mobile visitors who don?t want to wait.

User Experience

1. Make it obvious ? Aspects of your mobile website that you want the user to interact with should be made to look as such. Mobile visitors don?t have time to browse through every pixel of their screen to find your telephone number.

2. Enable Click-to-Call ? People still like speaking with people, especially if they want to book a restaurant or similar. Make sure your contact number renders as visible text, not a slow-loading image file. Or even better, enable Click-to-Call so they can touch the button and dial through straight away.

SEE ALSO: Mobile Marketing: The Next Stage in Evolution

With the above being just the tip of the iceberg, there are many other things to consider before creating a mobile website, or any form of Mobile Marketing campaign. One common discussion is whether or not a mobile website should be made, or if a mobile app is the better way to go. I will go into detail about this in the near future so stay tuned!

If you?re new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed to stay connected. Thanks for visiting!

Source: http://www.socialmediamarketing.com.au/social-media-marketing/how-your-business-should-have-approached-mobile-in-2012.php

Ramadan 2012 Michelle Jenneke batman Colorado Shooting News joe paterno British Open MC Chris

As Israelis vote, peace seems distant

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, is surrounded by bodyguards as he arrives with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, second right, and Likud party member Moshe Kahlon, left, to brief the media in Jerusalem, Monday, Jan. 21, 2013. General elections in Israel will be held Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, is surrounded by bodyguards as he arrives with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, second right, and Likud party member Moshe Kahlon, left, to brief the media in Jerusalem, Monday, Jan. 21, 2013. General elections in Israel will be held Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

Israelis wait for transportation under election campaign billboards of Israeli Prime Minister and Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Israel's Labor party candidate Shelly Yachimovichin, in the central Israeli city of Ramat gan, Monday, Jan. 21, 2013. The general elections will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013. Hebrew on billboard reads, "It can be better here." (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

A vandalized election campaign billboard of Israeli Prime Minister and Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu hangs on a main road in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Jan. 21, 2013. The general elections will be held on Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

JERUSALEM (AP) ? Benjamin Netanyahu seems poised for re-election as Israel's prime minister in Tuesday's voting, the result of the failure of his opponents to unite behind a viable candidate against him ? and the fact that most Israelis no longer seem to believe it's possible to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinians.

The widely held assumption of a victory by Netanyahu comes despite his grim record: there is no peace process, there is growing diplomatic isolation and a slowing economy, and his main ally has been forced to step down as foreign minister because of corruption allegations.

Even so, Netanyahu has managed to convince many Israelis that he offers a respectable choice by projecting experience, toughness and great powers of communication in both native Hebrew and flawless American English.

He was also handed a gift by the opposition. Persistent squabbling among an array of parties in the moderate camp has made this the first election in decades without two clear opposing candidates for prime minister. Even Netanyahu's opponents have suggested his victory is inevitable.

"His rivals are fragmented," said Yossi Sarid, a dovish former Cabinet minister who now writes a column for the Haaretz newspaper. "He benefits by default," he told The Associated Press in an interview.

The confusion and hopelessness that now characterize the issue of peace with the Palestinians has cost the moderates their historical campaign focus.

Many Israelis are disillusioned with the bitter experience of Israel's unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip in 2005 that led to years of violence. Others believe Israel's best possible offers have been made and rejected already, concluding that they cannot meet the Palestinians' minimal demands.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that in 2008 he offered the Palestinians roughly 95 percent of the West Bank, and additional territory from Israel in a "land swap." He also said he offered shared control of Jerusalem, including its holy sites. The Palestinians have disputed some of Olmert's account and suggested they could not close a deal with a leader who was by then a lame duck.

"There can't be peace because we've tried everything already. All the options have been exhausted. They apparently don't want to make peace, said Eli Tzarfati, a 51-year-old resident of the northern town of Migdal Haemek. "It doesn't matter what you give them ? it won't be enough."

Tzarfati expressed what seems to be a common sentiment.

A poll conducted last week in Israel by the New Wave Polling Research Institute found that 52 percent of respondents support the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel as part of a peace agreement. Yet 62 percent said they do not believe the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is a partner for peace ? and an identical number said it is not possible to reach a peace agreement. The survey questioned 576 people and had a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points.

In the absence of peace talks, those who wanted to end Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands used to speak of a unilateral pullout from at least some of the territories. But that idea has been mostly removed from the table because of the Gaza pullout, which led to the territory's takeover by Hamas militants and years of rocket fire into Israel.

This situation leaves many Israelis at a loss over what to do next.

Since most of the Palestinians are now living in autonomous zones inside the West Bank and prevented from entering Israel, and violence has largely subsided, the most attractive option to Israelis seems to be ignoring the issue.

That is what the main opposition party chose to do in this campaign. Labor Party leader Shelly Yachimovich has mostly focused on a populist social message in hopes of attracting working-class citizens who might otherwise vote for the hard-liners. In the past, Labor has been the leader of Israel's peace camp.

Another member of the moderate camp, former TV personality Yair Lapid, argues primarily for ending the costly government subsidies and draft exemptions granted to Israel's ultra-Orthodox minority.

Only one party with national leadership ambitions, the new "Movement" formed by former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, has made Mideast peace the centerpiece of its campaign. Polls show the party gaining little traction.

Sarid dismissed current public opinion as a "weather vane" that can easily shift.

"Israel has gone to war seven, eight times. It never despaired of going to war," he said. "If after seven attempts at war you don't despair, and after the first attempt at peace you do, that seems strange, no?"

Whatever the results for individual parties, the operative question is whether all the right-wing parties together can secure at least 61 seats of the 120 in parliament, the minimum for a majority coalition. Although all polls predict they will, several major polls last Friday showed the right with only 63 seats, versus 57 for the parties of the center-left.

Though the trend has been constant, the gap falls close to the margin of error of the polls, and they have been wrong in the past.

Should the right wing and religious parties fail to muster a majority, there will be a mad scramble on the center-left to try to form a coalition on their own. Under such a shocking result, the prime minister could end up being Yachimovich, a former radio journalist who admitted once backing Israel's Communist party.

Netanyahu has maintained a lead with a message that the country needs a tough-minded and experienced leader to face down dangers including the Iranian nuclear program, potentially loose chemical weapons in Syria and the rise of fundamentalist Islam in Egypt and other countries in the Arab Spring.

By comparison, the Palestinian issue seems less important to many Israelis.

Netanyahu's Likud-Yisrael Beitenu alliance is dominated by lawmakers who say the conflict can be managed, but not resolved. The surging pro-settler Jewish Home party has gone even further. It advocates annexation of large chunks of the West Bank, the heartland of any future Palestinian state.

Critics warn that Israelis are ignoring the issue at their peril. First, there are increasing signs that the current lull in violence may be temporary ? both because the Palestinian street is getting frustrated and because Abbas' Palestinian Authority may cease the security cooperation which even Israeli officials have credited with the halt in violence.

Beyond that, there is a persistent chorus warning that the status quo is ultimately self-defeating for Israel because the default outcome is a single entity in the Holy Land ? comprising Israel and all the areas it seized in the 1967 war. Based on current birthrates, most experts believe that Arabs would soon be the majority.

Palestinian officials say that Abbas has repeatedly warned Israeli visitors in recent months that Israel could end up like an "apartheid-style" state with a Jewish minority ruling over a disenfranchised Arab majority. At that point, the Arabs would turn their struggle away from independence and instead seek equality in a single state.

"Sooner or later the Israeli public should come to the realization that the longevity, security and legitimacy of their state are dependent on their treatment of the Palestinian people and their commitment to peace and justice, not to the subjugation of a whole nation," Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, wrote in Haaretz.

Many Israelis on the left agree with Ashrawi but have concluded a loss on Tuesday is inevitable, and they have grown increasingly apocalyptic in their warnings about what lies ahead.

Calling the occupation of the West Bank "a cancer," columnist and songwriter Yonatan Gefen argued that even a future civil war among Israelis is not out of the question.

"Either we put an end to our enslavement to the territories peacefully," he also wrote in Haaretz," or we will find ourselves ... fighting each other in order to save the people from themselves."

___

Follow Josef Federman at www.twitter.com/joseffederman

Follow Dan Perry at www.twitter.com/perry_dan

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-01-21-ML-Israel-Election/id-c0c3dfa281a24c87bb77d3eb8dd98658

zipper armenian genocide asteroid mining memorial day ivan rodriguez planetary resources mothers day gift ideas