Israel yesterday initiated a relatively small but highly significant expansion of its ground operations in Lebanon. To some in the wider world this will appear a warped reaction to the Qana bombing and the loss of lives that the Israeli military itself is experiencing. This thrust carries with it the risk that Israel will become ensnared in southern Lebanon as it was for 18 years.

Yet in Israel, this shift in strategy is viewed as an incremental manoeuvre. Many politicians and pundits are arguing for a more radical, military move than insisting on anything akin to an immediate ceasefire. Polls suggest that 90 per cent of the population believe that the response to Hezbollah has been right and three quarters of those surveyed think that the military campaign should be be prosecuted more vigorously. The army is having no difficulty in mobilising its reservists, even though the number of soldiers killed and wounded has been high and is rising. Yet a majority in the country also endorsed the withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza last year.

The reasons for this seeming shift in sentiment are illuminating. Hezbollah is perceived as representing a threat to the integral territory of Israel. This is fundamentally distinct in character to raids aimed at settlements in the West Bank, terrain about which a large section of Israeli opinion is indifferent. Those who have suffered from the rocket attacks in northern Israel are, similarly, seen as ordinary citizens without an ideological or a theological agenda. Israelis have, therefore, found it wholly natural to rally behind them.

There is, furthermore, a widely held fear that Hezbollah will deploy whatever devices it could acquire against Israel and that it might not be long before Tel Aviv comes under fire. That prospect is deemed so dire that most Israelis would prefer to deal with Hezbollah today, even at a sizeable cost to the country’s image abroad as well as its young men in uniform, than rely on the United Nations to “police” a boundary over which the Lebanese Government has been ostentatiously unprepared to exercise its sovereignty.

Such a strong domestic consensus is unusual. It was only five months ago that Ehud Olmert and his Kadima party came to office on a manifesto that stated explicitly that further territorial concessions would be required. They then formed a coalition with Labour, under Amir Peretz, which had promised a yet more conciliatory approach to the peace process. Their Likud rivals, by contrast, which took a far harder line toward Israel’s neighbours, were decimated in that election. But Mr Olmert and Mr Peretz, the Defence Minister, now find themselves pressed by the public to see this mission through.

That is what they will do until the international community can provide a credible force for southern Lebanon that will actively deter Hezbollah from launching missiles. Anything less will mean either no ceasefire is declared or one that lasts only until another assault on Israel. Many outsiders seeing pictures of civilian casualties in Lebanon regard Israel as the aggressor. Israelis of all stripes have rarely felt more like victims.