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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins, and this is The World. It has been another day of intense fighting in the Gaza Strip. United Nations says at least 30 people were killed in an Israeli artillery attack near a UN school used as a shelter in Gaza. Israeli military says it was responding to Palestinian fire from the school grounds. We're going to hear from the Israeli military as well as from doctors at the Rafah border crossing a little bit later in the program. But first, public opinion in Israel. It's running strongly in favor of the war, now in its 11th day. Even so, as Israeli casualties start to mount, some people are expressing doubts. The World's Quil Lawrence reports.

QUIL LAWRENCE: Dozens of wounded Israeli soldiers have arrived at Soroka Hospital in the southern city of Beersheba since the ground offensive began, and their relatives have been arriving from across Israel.

AMIKAM AM-SHALAM: My son is here in the hospital. He was wounded. I know that it was a grenade.

LAWRENCE: Amikam Am-Shalam says his son is putting on a brave face and wants to get back to his unit in Gaza. But Am-Shalam says he feels conflicted about the offensive.

AM-SHALAM: Our feelings are we don't want to wound anyone that is innocent. But we have to do something to stop this. So I don't know what to tell you.

LAWRENCE: As a father, he just wants his son to be safe. But Am-Shalam has another son who lives in a town near the Gaza Strip, which has come under heavy rocket fire by Hamas. He's afraid for both sons. The point was driven home as a warning siren sounded. The city of Beersheba is now within the range of rockets that Israel says it aims to stop by defeating Hamas. The hospital staff run indoors until the alert passes. The rockets are rarely fatal, but they have all of southern Israel in a state of fear. Hagat Ryne is also a parent of a soldier in Gaza. She says Israel should press on with the offensive. “In war” she says, “you don't count the bodies. You're going to war. Israeli civilians have died,” says Ryne, “and the attack on Gaza is 100 percent justified.” There have been protests against the war by the Israeli left, but so far this operation seems to have overwhelming public support here. Dalak Wulinitz is the host of a call-in show on Israeli army radio. Despite its military affiliation, the show gets opinions from all over the political spectrum. Today's show was full of support for Israeli soldiers, but he says some express doubts about whether the offensive will stop the rockets.

DALAK WULINITZ: People that are really suffering now, they are most afraid that they are suffering for nothing. At the end of this war, everything will be the same.

LAWRENCE: Do you get people talking about civilians in Gaza?

WULINITZ: Yes. Yes, not enough, but yes. You have to know this. Some of the people that are calling us for the last eight months have been suffering from Kassams and they don't think about anybody but their kids, their own suffering.

LAWRENCE: Wulinitz says even the strongest military supporters know the eventual solution will be political. The Israeli government aims to weaken Hamas before that political negotiation, but Wulinitz isn't sure it's going to make Israel's future more peaceful.

WULINITZ: The sad thing that you and I, even they know that the problem will be solved for, you know, for a time -- for months, for years, but not forever. We choose such enemies that the feeling it won't be – won't be so. It's a real deep problem. The idea, you know, that one day – one day after the war, the people in Gaza are going to be our neighbors, and their hatred and bad blood between us is something that it will take a long time to forget, to forgive. And it's – it's really sad. It's really sad.

LAWRENCE: For The World, this is Quil Lawrence, Beersheba, Israel.

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