The suggestion that Israel's military is about to embark on a wider ground campaign in Lebanon raises the question - why has it taken so long?
For a nation that laid low the armies of three neighbouring countries in six days in 1967, armies with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and large air forces, Israel's campaign has been puzzling.
After three weeks of fighting against a militia numbering only a few thousand men, Israeli ground forces have moved no more than a few kilometres into Lebanon. Relatively small combat teams combed a few villages and engaged in two sharp local battles in which a score of Israeli soldiers were killed along with several times that number of Hezbollah fighters.
In contrast, during the 1982 Lebanon war, Israeli divisions racing northwards from the border were at the gates of Beirut 100km away within a week.
Yet it is precisely the spectre of this conflict that haunts any decision to increase troops on the ground. The initial push into Lebanon in 1982 was lightning fast but 18 year later, they were still there.
It is for this reason that the burden of Israel's latest campaign against Hezbollah has been carried largely by the air force, which has flown thousands of sorties round-the-clock against arms caches, personnel and infrastructure. Israel's small navy has shelled shore targets and imposed a blockade on Lebanon's coast.
But the ground campaign has been carried out in an almost laconic manner that bears little relationship to Israel's stated goal of significantly reducing Hezbollah's warmaking capacity.