The number of women in their fifth, sixth and seventh month of pregnancy is up by 35 per cent on the previous year, according to health maintenance organisation statistics cited by Channel Ten TV.

Gila Bronner, director of the Sexual Health Service at the Sheba Medical Centre outside Tel Aviv, told the network that increased sexual activity after the war was an affirmation of life. "We wanted to tell the world, 'You tried to kill us but you didn't. See, we're alive'."

Paula Daniel, who lives in Nahariya, one of the towns worst hit by Katyusha rockets during the war, and whose 28-year-old daughter Adi is almost five months pregnant, said she believed there were several reasons for the boom, which replicates similar ones after the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Mrs Daniel, the wife of the deputy director of the town's Western Galilee hospital, said: "Everyone had either a family member or a close neighbour who was in the Army and when they come home everyone is joyous." Mrs Daniel, whose son-in-law was called up as a reservist, added: "After a potential tragedy, you begin to think, 'What, God forbid, if something happened and I lost this person, I wouldn't have anything left of him'."

Meanwhile, the Israeli state comptroller, Micha Lindenstrauss, warned that his inquiry into the much-criticised management of the "home front" in the war would "anger many people" and complained the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, had not yet answered a series of his questions.

Earlier, he backed down after a high profile legal wrangle and agreed not to detail his interim findings to a Knesset committee.

Mr Lindenstrauss has been accused by several commentators of grandstanding and attempting to "scoop" the Winograd committee, which is conducting a far-reaching inquiry into the conduct of the war and which some analysts believe could be highly damaging to Mr Olmert.

His report will address complaints by residents of the north that little provision had been made to look after, or if necessary evacuate, hundreds of thousands of Israelis confined to shelters during much of the war. Arab residents who suffered a large minority of the casualties from rocket attacks also complained about the lack of shelters or sirens, though it was unclear whether his report will tackle that issue.