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Times correspondent Roland Watson (left) hears from leaders in Tel Aviv the motives behind Israel's massive armed response to yesterday's raid by Hezbollah across the Lebanese border

"Israel has taken a big strategic decision by launching such a ferocious response against Lebanon and Hezbollah and it has done so for various reasons.

"Firstly, suffering a second kidnapping, this time of two soldiers, is something that Israel cannot afford to be seen to accept. The Israeli armed forces hold a peculiar and central place in Israeli life: every family has a relative or a friend serving in uniform. The Government simply must to do everything in its power to get the soldiers back.

"From a political perspective, the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert remains very new and untried. What's more, Olmert has no military experience, and neither does Amir Peretz, his Defence Minister, which is unusual.

"Most Israelis would deny that this makes Olmert a weak Prime Minister, and many say that the opposite, that the situation shows the strength of Israeli democracy. But there is undoubtedly a sense outside Israel, in the Palestinian Territories in the southern Lebanon, that this is a government that can be tested. This perception of weakness is something that Israel is eager to address.

"The third reason is that there is a sense at senior levels of the Israeli Government that the response to the first kidnapping, of the tank soldier Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was taken hostage by Palestinian gunmen on June 25, was not strong enough.

"Even though the response involved Israeli soldiers re-entering territory in Gaza that it had evacuated last year, and even though Israeli jets bombed Gaza's main power station and bridges, there was a still question mark over whether Israel had the appetite for a fight. In particular, the buzzing of President Assad's private residence in Syria had a ring of weakness.

"As to where this is going: at the moment, Israel does not seem to be thinking about an exit strategy. I think Israel's calculation is that this is a sufficiently large crisis to prompt the international community to step in and get tough with Syria for its support of Hezbollah and to make the Lebanese Government accountable for actions that take place within its borders.

"I think we can expect a day or two more of the Israeli bombardment of Hezbollah targets inside Lebanon. The Israeli military justified today's bombing of Beirut airport because they said it was used freely to channel arms from Iran to Hezbollah. Despite pressure from hawkish elements in the Israeli military establishment, there is no plan at present to take military action against Syria."

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