Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Tuesday he saw signs of movement toward a cease-fire and Hizbollah had suffered heavy losses, comments that appeared to prepare the ground for an end to fighting.
"If the military campaign would have ended today, today we could already say with certainty that the face of the Middle East has changed following the great achievement of the Israeli army and Israeli people," Olmert said.
While Israel would like to have another 10 to 14 days for an expanded air and ground offensive, senior Israeli officials acknowledged on Tuesday that the UN Security Council could intervene before then to impose a cease-fire.
Olmert said the conflict looked set to end with an international force in south Lebanon that would create a "real buffer" zone between Israel and Hizbollah with unprecedented support from the world community, including Arab countries.
Israel wants any cease-fire to take effect only after an international peacekeeping force has been deployed in south Lebanon, officials said.
"We are at the beginning of a political process that in the end will bring a cease-fire under entirely different conditions than before," Olmert told a graduation ceremony at the National Security College in central Israel.
"This threat will not be what it was. Never will they be able to threaten the (Israeli) people," he said, referring to Hizbollah.
Israeli officials estimated that 300-400 Hizbollah guerrillas had been killed and that two-thirds of the group's long-range missile capacity had been destroyed.
Hizbollah denied that number had died. A spokesman for the group had earlier said 43 fighters had been killed. Olmert said there was no cease-fire yet because Israel was still working to limit Hizbollah's strength. He said he had never promised the people of Israel that its offensive would destroy all of Hizbollah's missiles.