Israelis see the war against Hizbollah in stark terms. It's about the survival of the Jewish state - and that means showing Israel's enemies, especially Iran, that any attack will be severely punished.

That is why Israel is resisting mounting demands for an immediate ceasefire after an air strike killed 54 civilians, including 37 children, in a Lebanese village on Sunday.

It is why Israel will try to keep fighting Hizbollah until an international force has been deployed in southern Lebanon, even though US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday she believed a truce could be forged this week.

"Israelis see Hizbollah as a proxy of Iran that every morning threatens us with extermination," said Yaron Ezrahi, a political science professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. "This has triggered visions of the Holocaust and extermination. It explains why there has been such intense support here for the operation against Hizbollah."

Many Israelis fear Hizbollah is the speartip of Iran, whom they accuse of trying to build nuclear bombs and whose president has said the Jewish state should be wiped off the map. Iran insists its nuclear programme is for civilian use.

Although Iran funded and armed the Shi'ite guerrilla group in the 1980s, it insists support now is only moral and political. Israel disputes this, saying Hizbollah is using Iranian missiles to target its northern regions.

Even before the war with Hizbollah erupted on July 12, when the guerrillas abducted two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, Israel saw Iran as its biggest security threat.

Underscoring concern at what they see at stake in the conflict, Israeli editorial writers on Monday urged Prime Minister Ehud Olmert not to cave in to international pressure following the deadly attack on Qana village in southern Lebanon.

Olmert did order a 48-hour suspension of air strikes.

But hours later, Defence Minister Amir Peretz said Israel would not agree to an immediate ceasefire and said the army would "expand and deepen" its offensive.

"If an immediate ceasefire is declared, the extremists will rear their heads anew," Mr Peretz told parliament.

What many Israelis fear is that Hizbollah will walk away from the war bruised and battered but claiming victory for having faced down the Middle East's most powerful army.

Already the war has lasted three weeks. Israel's defeat of the combined Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq in the 1967 Middle East War took six days.

Michael Oren, author of a book on that conflict and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, said Israelis believed the army had to send a powerful message to Hizbollah and Iran.

While Hizbollah fighters were not about to march through the streets of Israeli cities as many feared the Arab armies would do in 1967, the stakes were just as high, he said.

"The fear is of being perceived as weak and vulnerable. Then when Iran acquires nuclear weapons Hizbollah can shell Israel with impunity and we will not be able to respond," Oren said.

"Foreign investment would flee the country, tourists would not come. The country could be strangled economically. In essence it would be the destruction of the Jewish state."

Despite the high civilian death toll in Lebanon, many Israeli commentators see the war as the most just since the Jewish state's founding in 1948. Opinion polls have also shown overwhelming support. At least 545 people have been killed in Lebanon. Fifty-one Israelis have been killed.

One factor that characterises the conflict for Israelis is that this time they do not see it as one over occupation, like that with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year stay.

About 1,500 Hizbollah rockets have also rained down on northern Israeli towns and cities - which Hizbollah describes as "settlements" in "occupied Palestine".

"No Arab-Israeli war has been like this," said Shlomo Avineri, a former Foreign Ministry director general.

"You are not fighting here about settlements and territory. Everybody realises the other side wants to exterminate us."

Alon Kelderon, 43, a plumber in the northern city of Haifa, a favourite target for Hizbollah rocket attacks, said Israel had to show the Arab world it had not gone soft.

"Let's face it, no one will shed a tear if Israel is destroyed. We must finish this for our own existence," he said.