Thousands of Israeli bombs have fallen on Lebanese homes, roads, bridges, ports, broadcasting towers and even a lighthouse.

Nearly 300 people, mainly civilians, have been killed, Lebanon?s prime minister said.

Analysts say Israel?s targeting of civilian and government infrastructure overshadows its strikes on the offices and rocket launchers of Hezbollah guerrillas, whose capture of two Israeli soldiers triggered the attacks.?But the growing list of civilian casualties ? despite Israel?s use of US-designed precision-guided bombs ? could turn Arabs and others against the Jewish state and its key ally, the US, and still not fatally wound Hezbollah?, said military analysts.

Israeli Cabinet ministers have said the bombing aims to punish Lebanon and make the government understand the entire country will suffer if Hezbollah ? which operates freely in the south ? isn?t reined in.

But Israeli military spokesman Captain Jacob Dallal said Wednesday that Israel?s bombing targets have direct military significance, since Hezbollah uses roads to transport its rockets and stores them in houses.

?A lot of the rockets are stored in people?s homes in urban areas, fired from within villages and brought in from the Damascus-Beirut highway,? Dallal said. ?We are in day eight and the present condition of Hezbollah is unlike it was on day one. There?s no comparison, their infrastructure, their weaponry have all been degraded considerably.?

Classic strategic bombardment campaigns aim to flatten key economic resources and are usually designed to bend the targeted government to the will of its attacker or turn the populace against the government.

The United States has been one of the chief proponents of strategic bombardment, launching campaigns in Vietnam, Iraq and Serbia. In World War II it targeted factories, railroads, bridges, ports and, in some cases, residential neighborhoods.

James Dobbins, a former Bush administration envoy to Afghanistan who now heads military analysis for the Rand Corporation, said choice of targets by Israel was the key and may be misdirected.

?The military rationale seems rather thin, since many of the targets have no conceivable relationship to Hezbollah,? he said.

Hezbollah has little visible presence and few links to Lebanon?s military. It is skilled at cloaking its actions from Israeli sensors, while its primitive rockets ? which have also killed innocents ? are fired from easy-to-hide mobile launchers. Their lack of a guidance system leaves them without a traceable electronic signature, said Mustafa Alani, a military analyst with Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. Targeting was far more discriminatory.

Despite tens of thousands of sorties, NATO is thought to have killed 500 civilians in the 2- 1/2 month campaign. By contrast, Israel has killed more than 250 Lebanese in eight days. The government, however, has been unable to fulfill a UN directive that Hezbollah be disarmed and that government forces take control of southern Lebanon.

Israel has also chosen to hit targets that the United States would probably reject, because of the danger of killing civilians, said Michele Flournoy, a former ?Our own population is very discriminating in the use of force. People here have bought into the idea of proportionality and the just war,? Flournoy said.

For Israel, ?it?s a balancing act,? Flournoy said. ?They want to use enough force to get through to the terrorists, while at the same time staying within international norms, so as not to become a pariah.?

Israel?s history, however, has produced a defense posture that views its enemies as fundamental and existential threats to the country?s very survival.

?The airports and bridges don?t belong to Hezbollah,? Alani said. ?People may understand their (Israeli) reactions for the first few days. But world leaders will soon say ?we don?t see any links between your attacks and the threat you face.?