Tel Aviv  - Unlike the 2006 war with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, Israel did not accompany the start of its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip with grandiose statements which could later come back to haunt it.

Instead of promising to destroy Hamas, Israeli officials talk about limiting the Islamist organization's ability to shower southern Israel with rockets and mortars, as it did in the week leading up to the Israeli assault.

"The operation in Gaza intends primarily to change the situation in the south part or our country," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said simply on Saturday night.

A senior Israeli military official said Israel was not even aiming to bring about a complete end to the rocket and mortar fire on its southern communities, but instead wanted to limit the Hamas attacks.

Israel analysts go further, saying that Israel's aim is also to create a new deterrence, whereby Hamas will realise it will pay a heavy price for intense rocket barrages.

Other commentators point out that the Israeli actions are also aimed at getting Hamas to agree to another ceasefire, similar to the one the organization did not renew when it expired on December 19.

"What started in Gaza Saturday morning is apparently a limited move aimed at securing a long-term ceasefire between Hamas and Israel on terms that are favorable to Israel," Ron Ben-Yishai, the veteran military analyst at the Yediot Ahronoth daily, said.

But these assumptions presuppose Hamas will emerge from the Israeli attacks chastened and chastised.

Hamas, however, believes it will win so long as it does not lose.

The more it is pummeled by Israel, the more support it will get and moreover, no matter how weakened it may be by the Israeli attacks, so long as it is still a coherent, functioning movement, it will likely claim success.

This is precisely what Hamas leaders did earlier this year, after an Israeli air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip left 116 Palestinians dead and 350 wounded.

Once the Israeli troops pulled out of the salient, Hamas held a victory parade and claimed success because the Israeli assault had failed to prevent it from firing its rockets.

Israel's need not only to weaken Hamas, but to make Hamas admit it has been weakened, may explain the ferocity of the Israeli assault, and may explain too, why Israeli leaders, from Prime Minister Olmert down, have warned that the current offensive is liable to continue for some time.

What could curtail the Israeli offensive is international pressure on it to stop.

Criticism has already been leveled at Jerusalem for "disproportionate use of force", a charge one Israeli military official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa had to be balanced in the context of thousands of rockets fired at Israel since 2001.

The charges against Israel, however deal less with the amount and type of ordnance used than with the massive casualties the attacks have caused - at least 345 Palestinian dead, most of them militant, but including a growing number of civilians, and 1600 wounded.

Israel argues that since the Gaza militias launch rockets and stockpile weapons in civilian areas - a fact confirmed by Gaza residents - civilian deaths are unavoidable and Hamas is to blame for them.

"Under the Geneva Conventions, as well as customary international law, if a military objective, such as a missile launcher or weapons stockpile, is placed in the heart of a civilian area, it does not cease being a lawful military objective," the Israel Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday.

"International law also requires that any military operation be 'proportionate' in the sense that expected collateral damage to civilians and civilian objects must not be excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated," the statement continued.

But it just takes one mis-aimed missile, stray bomb, or errant shell to hit, for example, a Gaza apartment building packed with people, and the pressure on Israel to halt its operation - even from countries currently supporting it - will grow, to the point where the calls become impossible to ignore. (dpa)