What Was He Thinking?

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The Israelis have begun enforcing a rule that anyone in Lebanon within a kilometer of the border will be considered an enemy. They have sent bulldozers across the border to clear away trees, boulders, bunkers and other structures that impede their view into this swath of territory. Maintaining such a buffer zone will theoretically prevent Hizballah from returning to its positions along the frontier, shooting small arms across it, kidnapping more soldiers and easily gathering intelligence on Israeli army movements. But it won't stop the militia from firing rockets from deeper inside Lebanon. Israeli forces have concentrated on tracking and eliminating Hizballah's rocket launchers, but with limited results. Many are hidden in bunkers that Israeli pilots can't find, which is largely why the infantry was sent in. While ground troops searched for launchers last week, Israeli intelligence pored over all the aerial photos of Lebanon taken by Israeli drones over the past six years, looking for evidence of bunker building so that pilots or ground troops could take out the rocket launchers likely held within. The idea is to weaken Hizballah as much as possible before a cease-fire takes hold and, more urgently, to stop Hizballah's rocketing of Israeli towns, which by the end of last week had taken 15 lives, on top of the 19 soldiers who have died in the conflict. Olmert knows that the longer Israel's north is crippled by rocket fire, the more the public is likely to question whether his onslaught was well calculated.

Such questioning could, in turn, prompt Olmert to conclude he needs to sustain the fight until he can end it in a way that clearly rewards his gamble. "Israel must emerge from this war as a winner, or else the war will continue," says Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres. That's an equation that could make for a conflict even longer and nastier than the one that has already surpassed either party's bellicose ambitions.