lets be honest here .... israel only used in the "overall fighting" in lebanon , just about 10000 soldirs ,pilots , tanks etc ... and untill the last two days of the war , when israel entered more troops into lebanon - they used even less troops then 10000 soldirs ..... which is less then 10% of the idf overall power
and the outcome ?
The hizbolla was crushed in every battle , big or small , in matter of minutes ... the battles that lasted over few hours , like in bint jibil , was due to hizbolla hiding in ruins in small numbers , and idf soldirs hunting them down
the hizbolla forces was cut off from south lebanon , when israel destroyed all roads to the region of fighting
the remaining hizbolla troops who actually fougth the war , was somthing like a 1000 soldirs , of whom , about 700 got killed , many surrendered , and the rest was injured
almost anyone who fired rockets - was killed ... they just had many sucieders
100 of sumalian merceneries they brougth ...was killed
lebanon itself was devastated , and this was only an attack against specificly the shiites , israel chosed to dont attack the rest ..... so the shiites towns ,cities and big neigberhoods even in beirut was all leveled
lebanon had over half a million refugees who fled the country into cyprus , and over a tousand of dead civilians .
and the israeli air force , proved , he can carry out many sorties , the stuff people thougth only usa can do .... tousands of flights by war planes .... tousands of targets was destroyed in the first few hours of fighting (for anyone who say israel cant "handle" so many targets like the iranian nuclear facilities at once, he should re-check his sources)
so ... look , of course it depends on what exactly you want to do .... ulmert wanted to punish them , and he defintly got that one.
no one is saying that there were nothing else left to do ... it depends on who pulls the strings and what are his aims from such a operation ...