Missile War Is a New Challenge To Israel's Long Rule of the Sky

But those successes also included decisive contributions from the armored corps and infantry. The limits of air power became clear during the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s. Facing a restive population using mostly rocks and civil resistance, airstrikes made little tactical sense. That changed during the second Palestinian uprising, when Israeli aircraft were deployed to bomb government buildings in the West Bank and Gaza and to shoot missiles at suspected militants.

"Even if the military operation may temporarily stop the rockets from Lebanon and Gaza, Israel must be ready to pay a certain price, namely to negotiate in order to stop it forever," said Gabriel Sheffer, a political science professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "There will be no end to the rockets until there is a political and cultural solution to the broader conflict."

Israel began developing anti-missile systems after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when the Jewish state was hit by Scud missiles from Iraq, despite the U.S.-deployed Patriot anti-missile system and thousands of U.S. Air Force sorties over Iraq's western desert searching for launchers. The Israeli military has since deployed the Arrow-2 anti-missile system, designed to knock down ballistic missiles such as the Scuds possessed by Syria but not the shorter-range Katyushas or Qassams.

In partnership with the U.S. Army, Israel had begun developing the Nautilus, a laser-based system for use against short-range missiles. One of the virtues of the Nautilus was that, for the first time, it was designed to provide a cost-effective way to knock down Katyushas. But despite a successful test a few years ago, the U.S. Army backed out of the program.

In Gaza, Israel has relied largely on airstrikes and artillery fire to go to the source of the Qassams. The rockets range from 2 1/2 to 6 1/2 feet in length and are usually made from metal tubing, sometimes from sawed-up lampposts uprooted from Gaza's streets.

They are fired from collapsible metal stands, often from dunes, orchards or narrow streets, and the farthest one has traveled roughly nine miles. In attempting to stop rockets, the Israeli military has fired more than 11,000 artillery shells into Gaza and carried out scores of assassinations from the air since withdrawing its last soldier from the strip in September.

"The shorter the range, the more difficult it is to do something against it," said Isaac Ben-Israel, a retired major general who headed the research and development directorate of Israel's Defense Ministry. "The time between preparing the rockets and hitting the targets is seconds. There's nothing you can really do to intercept them."

In Lebanon, Israel's threat has primarily been the Katyushas, commonly 120mm factory-made rockets that carry a roughly 40-pound warhead. In recent days, however, Hezbollah has fired rockets more than 25 miles with payloads twice the size of the traditional Katyusha.

But Ben-Israel, who now runs the security studies department at Tel Aviv University, said the longer-range rockets actually present easier targets for Israel's air force because they require sophisticated launchers that are easier to track. Israeli military officials say they have had some success in recent days knocking out the known Hezbollah launch sites and rocket fire has declined, though it is unclear whether that is a result of the military operation or Hezbollah's strategy.

The longer-range rockets are also far more expensive than Katyushas, meaning Hezbollah likely has fewer of them.

By relying on airstrikes and limited incursions, Olmert has avoided long and bloody ground operations that could lead to an unpopular occupation. A small number of Israeli special forces have been operating just inside the Lebanese border against Hezbollah posts, Israeli military officials said, although there are no signs that an invasion force is being assembled. All but a few specialized army reservists remain at home.

Oren, who was with one of the first Israeli army units to enter Beirut in the 1982 Lebanon invasion, said Hezbollah's longer-range arsenal signals that "the whole notion of territorial depth is losing meaning. Clearly the issue here is a political and diplomatic solution. There is no military solution."

"In order to get rid of rockets, you have to occupy the territory," said Zeev Schiff, the longtime military affairs correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz who co-wrote the definitive account of the Lebanon war. "If you took south Lebanon, you might solve the short-range rockets. Then, people will tell you, Hezbollah will just find longer-range missiles. So do you occupy northern Lebanon? So it goes."