What is happening in Gaza has no parallel in recent history. For nearly three years Gaza’s entire population, 1.5 million people, has been subjected to a cruel siege from land, sea and air. But worse than the siege itself is the silence of the whole world.

Before the siege, Gaza has been under occupation since 1967.

The narrative supporting Israel’s criminal collective punishment is widely accepted: Israel is merely defending itself against Hamas, a “terrorist organisation” bent on destroying the Jewish state. Hamas continues to fire rockets at the Israeli village of Sderot, to which foreign dignitaries flock to show their solidarity. The so-called international community, Arab “moderates” and the foreign-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah implore Hamas to abandon the path of violence, but those “extremists” do not listen. Poor little Israel is only reacting to aggression, as any state would do.

And then the question is asked, why does Hamas not listen? If it only stopped “provoking” Israel, it would save the people of Gaza from further suffering.

If Hamas insists on firing rockets, which PA President Mahmoud Abbas mocks as “rockets of futility” and Egypt’s foreign minister refers to as “fireworks”, then only it is to blame when Israel tightens the siege.

The answer Hamas’ critics provide is usually that Hamas is committed to Iran’s push to expand its influence in the region and wants to establish an “Islamic emirate”.

These are the kind of false arguments endlessly repeated, but which explain why Hamas has been opposed by more states in the region than just Israel, and why there is such apathy, even support for the siege.

But even if all of the above were true, Israel’s siege still violates every moral principle and constitutes one of the highest possible crimes in international law: deliberately inflicting suffering on a civilian population to serve a political agenda and maintain illegal conquests.

Even calling it “collective punishment” is generous to Israel, because the only “crime” that the people of Gaza committed is to exist and refuse to disappear so that Israel can steal their land and rights in “peace”.

Fighting “terrorism” is just the excuse. The real goal in Gaza is to topple Hamas, and starvation is being used where other methods have failed. This is exactly what was tried against the people of Iraq in the 1990s with the sanctions that killed more than half a million but did no harm to the regime of Saddam Hussein.

From 1992 to 2003, Iraq’s population was deliberately deprived of basic needs under UN sanctions. The UN then instituted a programme to feed them just a little bit, the “oil-for-food programme”. Yet even the immoral, and probably illegal, Iraq sanctions were less harsh than those suffered by Gaza. Under the oil-for-food programme, many basic commodities could still enter the country. That is not the case in Gaza, which remains under total blockade, except for what a few Palestinians can bring in, heroically risking their lives by digging dangerous tunnels - lifelines - to Egypt.

The idea in Iraq, as in Gaza, was to deliberately inflict suffering on the people until they would rise up and overthrow their leaders. In other words, a form of terrorism is applied, using food and medicine instead of bombs or missiles. This failed in Iraq and is failing in Gaza. In Iraq, sanctions were even counterproductive, helping the regime recover from its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War and allowing Saddam to tighten his grip. The sanctions managed to convince ordinary Iraqis that their true enemy was not their dictator, but the “international community” that was happy to starve them.

As cruel and unjustified as the sanctions were in Iraq, in Gaza they are even more outrageous. There is not even the excuse that Gaza “invaded its neighbours” as Iraq did. Gaza is an occupied territory. Eighty per cent of its population is refugees driven from their homes in what is now said to be Israeli territory. They are forbidden from returning to their homes and villages not because of any crime they committed, but because they fail to meet the racial and religious criteria of the so-called “Jewish state”, established against their will and without their consent on their land. Unlike Saddam, the Hamas government targeted for overthrow was democratically elected. But just like Iraqis under sanctions, people in Gaza are not rising up against their leaders despite the unbearable suffering inflicted on them by Israel and its friends. The people of Gaza know exactly who their real oppressors are.

In the end, Israel’s war of starvation on the people of Gaza will be no more “successful” than its war of cluster bombs against Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Israel should not be deceived by the silence of some Arab regimes. Beneath the crust of these regimes, ever more anger and hatred towards Israel is building up as a result of its actions. Even the official silence should not be taken for granted as sign of voluntary approval.

If Israel had true friends, unlike the European and American politicians who constantly reward it for its crimes, they would point out that Hamas observed the ceasefire for five months until Israel shattered it, on November 4, by killing six Palestinians. Any rockets fired from Gaza were a response to a much bigger and deadly aggression from Israel, and thus were within the “rules of the game” in the ceasefire. They would point out that Hamas had unilaterally observed a truce long before and after its election, and that it is Israel that has waged constant aggression in Gaza and throughout the West Bank. Hamas, as is now known, sent multiple messages, including to President George Bush, expressing willingness to engage in peace negotiations, but all that was ignored.

Why does no one in the so-called international community have the courage to put these glaring facts before Israel? Perhaps it is always easier and safer to blame the victims, especially when 750,000 of them are children who cannot speak out or defend themselves.

As the bakeries in Gaza run out of flour, no one with power dares stop Israel, challenge its “right” to occupy, besiege, kill, colonise, displace, persecute, torture, dehumanise the owners of a land. Israel, no matter what it does, is just “defending itself”.

All these things seem certain, solid and permanent today, just like the Berlin wall once did. Israel and its sponsors may be surprised one day when the volcano they are sitting on erupts.