What Was He Thinking?

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As the conflict continues, however, that support will be tested. Having found air raids insufficient, the military has begun sending ground troops on limited incursions into southern Lebanon. Israel has called up three battalions of reservists in addition to three that had been called to duty earlier. As tanks and armored personnel carriers massed on the border, the Israelis insisted they had no intention of reoccupying Lebanon, but many feared they could wind up there again. "This is how it starts," said a former government official, referring to the in-and-out raids authorized so far.

Throughout the crisis, Olmert has displayed a characteristic decisiveness. "In his meetings, everyone has a limited time to talk," says a senior aide to an Israeli government minister. "Then he makes decisions quickly. He's a fast thinker and not hesitant--for better and worse." When Hizballah took the soldiers hostage, Olmert faced a challenge. He could have opted for a limited response: in 2000, after all, five months after Israel pulled its troops out of southern Lebanon following an 18-year occupation, Hizballah kidnapped three Israeli soldiers, and Israel declined to retaliate, choosing calm over escalation and, eventually, opting for negotiations that resulted in an exchange of the three soldiers' bodies for prisoners held by Israel. Yet this time Olmert reacted by declaring the hostage taking an "act of war," and Israel responded in kind. Within 24 hours, Israel conducted some 1,000 air missions over Lebanon--a number on par with the first day of the full-fledged war of 1982, when Israel moved to oust Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, which had been using Lebanon as a staging ground for attacks on Israel.

For Israel the latest hostage taking also represented an opportunity. For almost six years since Israel had quit southern Lebanon, the Israelis watched Hizballah build fortifications along the border and stockpile rockets and missiles. Of late, Hizballah's charismatic leader, Hasan Nasrallah, had explicitly threatened to kidnap Israeli soldiers, and Jerusalem believes it thwarted at least two attempts by his fighters to do just that. Army brass had urged the political leadership to respond with precisely the kind of campaign Olmert has initiated, and Israeli forces practiced just such an operation in a tabletop exercise as recently as two months ago. After the soldiers' kidnapping, Olmert, according to one of his ministers, presented his Cabinet with the military's plans and after a discussion said he was approving the action. The Cabinet unanimously backed him: it was time to hit back, hard. The goal was not just to roll back Hizballah but to show that Israel is willing to fight. It was a message meant to dissuade adversaries from harassment and was aimed at Hizballah; at Hamas, which, in addition to kidnapping the corporal, has launched homemade rockets from Gaza into Israel; and at Iran, which sponsors Hizballah and supports Hamas and whose President has called for Israel's destruction.