ISRAELI PUBLIC OPINION:ISRAEL'S four-day-old ground assault into the Gaza Strip may have already claimed the lives of nine soldiers but Tali Bar-Ilan is convinced that the campaign must be pushed forward.
"We have to continue until we push Hamas against the wall," said the 47-year-old bookstore saleswoman in Tel Aviv whose son serves in the Israeli army.
"We can't give up until we reach an agreement and stop the rocket fire." Most Israelis back the operation, according to opinion polls, but pollsters give warning that the support is highly volatile.
For Israeli politicians who face a tight general election in less than five weeks, the time to end the conflict may be approaching fast as they seek to take advantage of their soaring popularity.
Ehud Barak, the defence minister and leader of the centre-left Labor party, has had a good war so far, according to the polls.
A survey for Israel's Channel 10 on Tuesday night found that 68 per cent of Israelis have a favourable opinion of Mr Barak, up from 53 per cent last week and the highest approval rating for him since he returned to politics in 2007.
Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and leader of the centrist Kadima party, has not had a similar bounce in the polls.
But Ms Livni's hawkish stance during the war may yet benefit her as she battles with Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the rightwing Likud party, for the Israeli leadership next month.
While an inconclusive end to the war - one that would leave Hamas intact and in control of the Gaza Strip - poses a risk to Mr Barak and Ms Livni, so does the continuation of the fighting.
Tamir Shaefer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says: "The big question is how the end of the war will be framed, whether the government will manage to frame it as a success or whether the opposition and Hamas will manage to present it as a failure.
"The longer Israel is there and Hamas is not defeated, the more sceptical the public will become regarding the ability to win such a war." A new ceasefire with a weakened Hamas and some form of enforcement mechanism to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza may, in other words, be preferable to a long war that would see Israeli soldiers battle with Hamas fighters from house to house.
For the time being, the Israeli public are overwhelmingly supportive of the Gaza assault. The Channel 10 poll found almost three out of four Israelis backed the ground operation.
Moshe Eliezer, a 48-year-old owner of a beauty parlour, says he wants the operation to last "until we hit Hamas hard enough".
His family lives in the south and has been enduring rocket fire for eight years. "We need to topple Hamas. For me, a successful operation would mean that Hamas would no longer exist", he says.
However, analysts warn that public opinion can change dramatically in response to events on the ground, in particular the loss of Israeli lives. Gadi Wolfsfeld, a professor of politics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argues that "we have gone beyond the initial euphoria, and [are] getting to the point where everybody says: okay, so now what?"