THE war is not going as planned for the Israeli Government. Four weeks into a conflict that was supposed to last days, Hezbollah rockets are still raining on northern Israel, the military is struggling to carve out a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, and the number of Israeli soldiers and civilians killed yesterday topped 100.

But Israel is not wobbling. It is almost the reverse. The greater the setbacks, the greater appears to be the country’s resolve to finish the job.

Support for the war in Israel remains unwavering, with the overwhelming majority of Israelis believing that the war was forced upon them, and that the sacrifices are worth making to destroy Hezbollah and avert endless conflict.

At the Naot shoe factory near Kiryat Shemona in northern Israel, where the few staff don bullet-proof vests during missile warning sirens, Michal Schnabel, the chief operating officer, said: “In Israel we say one soul is a complete world. For us every soldier, every person, getting killed is terrible. But if we had not done it how many other people would have been killed? I think we had no choice.”

Sitting on the Tel Aviv beachfront with its turquoise Mediterranean backdrop, Leor Feder, 23, said: “One Israeli life, let alone a hundred, is too many. But everyone understands that we have reached the point of no return. The stakes are too high and, if we don’t go on now, those 100 lives would have been for nothing. We have to finish it.”

Udi Luria, 32, who practises Chinese medicine in Tel Aviv, is concerned by the high cost in lives on both sides, but believes that Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, had no choice. “They simply must stop the rockets,” he said. “This is something that no country can put up with. And, if there is quiet for years to come, that will be worth the lives we’ve paid with. People will stay behind the Government because they realise this is the only way we can get years of respite.”

Arnon Shany, 55, an Israeli pilot who has been extinguishing Katyusha rocket fires in northern Israel, is convinced that maximum force is the only answer. “We are not losing but it must look like a big win, not just 50-50, so that everybody from Fouad Siniora [the Lebanese Prime Minister] to somebody sitting in a tent in Saudi Arabia realises we are not beaten and it is dangerous to start attacking us.”

Opinion polls show 80 or 90 per cent support for the offensive in southern Lebanon, but in the latest Teleseker survey in the Maariv newspaper only 54 per cent thought Israel was winning.

Even armchair generals, who have offered trenchant criticism of the military’s tactics and strategy, agree that the offensive should be stepped up. “We need to use a few divisions who will have to flush southern Lebanon up to the Litani river,” wrote Ben Caspit, a columnist in Maariv. “With tremendous force, with a massive amount of armour and fire. Why? Because there is no other choice.”

Back on the Tel Aviv beach, the war could be in another country, except for the 40 couples from northern Israel who had cancelled their weddings because of the fighting. They were rehearsing after being offered a ceremony by the sea next week. Life goes on.

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