After a month of inconclusive fighting, Israel decided to expand its offensive against Hizbollah, a move analysts said would not defeat the Lebanese guerrilla group and might leave Israel more exposed.
"The bottom line is that Israel cannot claim a military victory in any form," said Nadim Shehadi, a Middle East expert at British foreign affairs group Chatham House.
"The only chance that Israel and the United States have of coming out with a positive result is a political solution within Lebanon in which Hizbollah is disarmed," he said, linking that political solution to a pending UN resolution on the crisis.
Israel sees it differently. Building on weeks of devastating air strikes across Lebanon, it now has about 10,000 troops inside the country, battling Hizbollah in the south and trying to establish a several-kilometre-deep border "buffer" zone. Despite losing nearly 70 soldiers in the offensive, Israel's Security Cabinet decided to expand the operation which could see up to 20,000 more troops sent in and a push as far north as the Litani river, 20 kilometres inside Lebanon.
With the Israeli population expressing distress that more has not been achieved in four weeks of fighting - and with Hizbollah still pounding northern Israel with rockets - the government and army are keen to show they can get results.
Israeli officials have told Western diplomats they hope an expanded offensive will increase Israel's leverage as the United Nations weighs a resolution, probably this week, on the deployment of an international force to southern Lebanon.
"They want to increase pressure on the international community to deploy a force," one Western diplomat briefed by the Israelis told Reuters, adding that Israel saw its broader offensive as a "parallel process" to the UN discussions. Another Western diplomat said Israel had indicated it was prepared to halt the widened operation after a few days if an agreement was reached at the United Nations calling for an end to military operations.
Mr Shehadi sees Israel's fixation on the military option as old-style thinking that will only make things harder for the Jewish state, not just in terms of securing a victory, but in terms of increased loss of life in both Israel and Lebanon.
"It's like quicksand. The deeper they go in militarily, the harder it's going to get. The more they rely on the military option, the less success there will be," he said. Gidi Grinstein, a former Israeli government negotiator who now heads his own research institute, also sees problems with a dependence on military might if it can't get results.
"Unless you have an overwhelming military victory against a guerilla group, then you don't have a victory at all," he said, while also not dismissing the potential for a broader offensive to achieve something beyond what's been gained so far.
"If Israel finds itself stuck in Lebanon with a standing army, then Hizbollah will be in its comfort zone," he added.
For Ms Grinstein, the greater concern is the terms of the UN resolution.
If it ends up creating a window of time between a ceasefire being called, an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and the deployment of an international force, then Israel could end up with next to nothing to show from weeks of combat.
"A significant window - and I mean weeks - would erase all the military gains Israel has made," he said.
"The speed of deployment of an international force is critical to solidifying what Israel has tried to do militarily. But the prospect of having a significant international force on the ground is slim."