"Can I leave this view?" asks Baradhi, a 46year-old Greek Catholic, staring across fishing boats that have not left their moorings in Tyre harbour since the Israeli bombardment of the ancient Phoenician port city began two weeks ago. She is the only remaining member of her extended family of 20, all the rest of whom fled to Beirut after the third day of missile strikes. "If I left, I might not be able to come back. Even if they destroy all the buildings, I will stay."

The Baradhis are a merchant family that once ran cargoes of sugar and flour south to Haifa. The unmarried Madonna, a French-educated, multilingual bank employee, is every bit a symbol of the modern Lebanon that she says her generation has strived for so long to achieve, but which is now being undone before their eyes. "It's a terrible situation, " she says.

In the morning she still goes to the bank, abandoned by other staff, to reply to faxes sent by Lebanese expatriates seeking to transfer their money out of the country. In the afternoon she fields phone calls from family members . . . one postponing a wedding, others cancelling planned visits from Europe. With her cousin, Melhem Tawil, she bustles along deserted streets, where horses eat from piles of rotting waste. The quiet is punctuated only by the regular slam of Israeli missiles and the arrival of minibuses packed with desperate families from villages near the southern border.

"I think the neighbours of Lebanon are jealous of us and our wonderful country, " says Baradhi. "I cannot believe this is all about two prisoners.

Israel wants to take Lebanon. Syria wants to take Lebanon. We love life and we want to live. Nobody seems to want peace for Lebanon." She is interrupted by a phone call. "No, no, we didn't feel a thing.

There's no problem, " she says to a concerned relative in Beirut, who has just heard news of another air strike only a few hundred metres from her home.

When the Israelis invaded in 1982, she says, "we had to stay on the beach for five days with nothing. We were drinking seawater. When I came back to the town my new car had been crushed into the shape of a cigarette by a tank."

The family home, an airy Mediterranean stone house, has been constantly refurbished over decades of destruction. "All other buildings around us have been destroyed. Sometimes I feel like I have seven lives." The last renovation, in 1996, was almost complete when Israeli air strikes left glass shattered, interior walls ruined and antique pottery smashed. This time around, however, she is not sure she would be able to rebuild. "Salaries now are not enough to live on, " she says, adding that she fears ending up like the family next door, who left their house in ruins and moved to Beirut.

"Every time we look to the future, the present pushes us back, " says her cousin, Melhem. "I don't think we have fully recovered from the last warf The Lebanese middle class has been wiped out."

Madonna says: "I feel sad for the Israelis as well. I'm sure they feel like I do when they hear explosions. It is not the ordinary people who are fighting. Nobody asked us if we wanted this war.

This is 2006, and the world is all connected, but still some people are fighting, and for what?"

WHAT IS ISRAEL TRYING TO DO IN LEBANON?

The operation in Lebanon . . . a massive aerial bombardment as well as a blockade of the country . . . began as a response to the crossborder raid in which two soldiers were abducted by Hezbollah 18 days ago. But its goal is now to remove as far as possible the threat posed across Israel's northern border by Hezbollah. Although much of the political rhetoric by ministers in the early days of the operation raised expectations that Hezbollah could be destroyed altogether, there is much more talk now from the military of "crippling" the guerrilla group . . .

not least by limiting its capacity to fire rockets into northern Israel . . . and creating a "sterile" or buffer zone in the border area.

Even Dan Halutz, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) chief of staff, has said Israel's objectives cannot be achieved by military means alone.

Israeli officials suggest that the weakening of Hezbollah, including cutting off its supply of weapons, is a necessary precondition of striking a ceasefire agreement that will make the international commitment to disarming it . . . enshrined in UN resolution 1559 . . . work in practice. Israel originally said it wanted the Lebanese army to maintain security in the southern border zone and complete the task of disarming a weakened Hezbollah; now its preference would be for a large, perhaps 20,000strong, Western-led multinational force in the south and perhaps along Lebanon's border with Syria as well. Israel believes that decisive evidence that it has seriously damaged Hezbollah's fighting capabilities would encourage the Europeans among others to contribute to such a force; it would also give Ehud Olmert the chance he badly needs to claim a military success.

HOW PREPARED WAS ISRAEL FOR THE HEZBOLLAH RESISTANCE?

Prime minister Ehud Olmert said last Wednesday, when nine soldiers had died in the battle over the southern Lebanon town of Bint Jbeil, that Israel had not been surprised by the level of resistance. But all the testimonies from wounded and other soldiers suggest they were indeed struck by how much better trained, disciplined, and effective Hezbollah forces had become since before the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Moreover, the casualties were inflicted less than 24 hours after Brigadier General Shuki Sachar, deputy head of the northern command, had explicitly told reporters that the IDF had accomplished "almost all of its missions" in the area of Bint Jbeil and the neighbouring village of Maroun Ar-Ras by taking the high positions round it. It was after troops began to go into the town that it met concerted resistance. And all this came after, by Brigadier Sachar's admission, the IDF had changed the "balance of forces" to bring in ground troops after several days of a massive air and artillery campaign which, while inflicting what senior officers call "some very good blows" against Hezbollah, killing hundreds of civilians and damaging Lebanese infrastructure, failed to make much impact on some of Hezbollah's best hidden bunkers, tunnels, and weapons caches in southern Lebanon.

IS THE ARMY NOW PLANNING A FULL-SCALE GROUND INVASION?

This weekend Dan Halutz said: "One of the things we don't want is to rush ourselves into a larger ground operation. We don't want that. But if there is no way to avoid it, we are prepared for that, too." The Israeli leadership, military as well as political, is aware of the dangers of anything which invokes memories of the 1982 war which started its 18-year entanglement in Lebanon. Equally, despite seeing Damascus as well as Tehran as a paymaster of Hezbollah, it doesn't want to find itself embroiled in a direct confrontation with Syria whose forces have also been put on high alert. Moreover, the Israeli cabinet made it clear that such an invasion would require a fresh meeting to approve it.

On the other hand the mere presence of such a force on the northern border could create its own dynamic, particularly if the diplomatic process fails to make headway in the next few days, or the apparent attempt to create a bridgehead around Bint Jbeil is itself seen to fail. Olmert could face real pressure to react with massive force, for example, if Hezbollah launched a major rocket attack on Tel Aviv or there were large numbers of military casualties.

WOULDN'T THAT MAKE THE PUBLIC WARY OF AN INVASION?

That's not the way it looks. Not only do polls suggest Olmert has overwhelming support . . .

over 80% . . . for military action to "cripple" Hezbollah before ceasefire negotiations start, but a new poll, taken after the reverse at Bint Jbeil, shows 50% wanting the use of more military power. This support has a downside. Israeli officials, realistic in private about what can be achieved militarily, are increasingly emphasising the need for a diplomatic endgame. The danger for Olmert is that if public expectations of a military victory are too high, he disappoints an electorate whose trust he still needs to win, or he becomes embroiled in a big land war which becomes as unpopular as Israel's last one in Lebanon.