Despite support across Israel's political spectrum for a strong response to Hamas, many Israelis are wary of a prolonged offensive.
"How many soldiers are expected to be killed in the first wave?" columnist Zvi Barel asked in Sunday's Haaretz newspaper. "How many months is the [army] expected to spend in Gaza, sweeping its houses and tunnels? How many Palestinian civilians will be killed?"
Reuven Pedatzur, head of the security studies program at Israel's Netanya College, said the longer Israel fights in Gaza, the more difficult it will become to justify withdrawing.
"Yes, the operation started successfully, but we need to ask ourselves how we get out and arrive at negotiations," he said.
Such decisions now rest in the hands of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Olmert had been elected just four months before the Lebanon war and later endured censure by a government-appointed panel for the way he and his top aides had conducted it. Amir Peretz, the wartime defense minister, later stepped down.
Disgraced by corruption charges and forced in September to resign, Olmert remains a caretaker leader with a major military conflict on his agenda before elections in February to choose his successor.
Israeli commentators who watched him announce the offensive Saturday said he looked more subdued than the overconfident leader who addressed the nation at the start of the Lebanon war.
"Olmert was a serious, reserved man, who has learned that some situations call for modesty," columnist Sima Kadmon wrote on Ynet, a news website. "His words lacked the grandiose promises made on the eve of the Lebanon war."
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boudreaux@latimes.com
