Translated from the Hebrew by Rela Mazali

Let's be clear about this: Israel's fire at Gaza has not ceased. There is no Israeli ceasefire in Gaza. There is no Israeli ceasefire even when Israel's soldiers aren't shooting a single bullet in Gaza.

There are food shortages in Gaza. Israel is denying Gaza food.  70% of the families in Gaza do not have enough food. The prices of food have risen, are rising. The price of flour is up by a third. Israel prohibits fishing off the Gaza coast, denying a source of protein that is central to many in Gaza. Food shortages kill.  Denying food is fire.

There's a shortage of potable water in Gaza. Israel obstructs the regular provision of water there, both for drinking and for hygiene. Water shortages kill. Denying water is fire.

There are medicine shortages in Gaza. Israel is denying Gaza medicines. A friend's brother, a physician who works in a hospital, is now calling himself a photographer. He x-rays patients' conditions but cannot offer them treatment. Mostly, medicine shortages take the lives of infants, of children, of elderly and sick people. Denying medicines is fire.

There are power shortages in Gaza. Israel denies Gaza electricity. Power shortages take the lives of kidney patients who do not get regular dialysis treatments, of patients who depend on respirators, of diabetics who depend on refrigerated insulin, of babies whose food rots. Denying electricity is fire.

There is no reasonable economy in Gaza. For nine months now Israel has denied the Palestinian Authority tax revenues amounting to half its annual budget. Israel is withholding the salaries of 165,000 employees in both Gaza and the West Bank, 60,000 of them from Gaza, representing 40% of the employed workforce there. In Gaza and the West Bank over one million and seventy thousand people now subsist without basic living conditions. For nine months both Israel and the world have also withheld additional funds from the Palestinian Authority. Agriculture, production and commerce are dying within the Authority and with them, people are dying too. Economic siege is fire.

There is no freedom of movement in Gaza. Denying free movement kills those in need of life-saving medical treatment; those who depend on work away from home; women who are forced to give birth without vital assistance and babies born to such women. More than ever today, unemployed workers are confined to their homes, to frustrating humiliation, to enraging helplessness. More than ever today women exposed to domestic violence are imprisoned within the danger zones of their families. Denying free movement is fire.

The siege of Gaza is fire in disguise. Its victims aren't counted among Israel's casualties. It creates a dominion of creeping, blind death; it doesn't even pretend to distinguish combatants from civilians. But first of all it kills the helpless.

Let's be clear about this: Israel has made Gaza a death compound.

True, the siege isn't total. There is no hunger as such in Gaza, there's food, but not enough. There is power in Gaza, some of the time, not enough.

There is medicine in Gaza, for some, not enough. There are exits and entries at the borders, sporadically, not enough.

Israel has created the semblance of a humanitarian siege; A weapon of mass destruction that is hiding in the details, reflected only through precise information and personal stories. But access to Gaza is difficult; communications are erratic. People there struggle to subsist day by day. How much can they invest in counting, recording, writing, in photography? The siege of Gaza is also a siege of freedom of information.

Therefore, for nine months now, the siege has been fairly successful at hiding this simple truth: The siege of Gaza is a crime; it is indiscriminate murder; it is a systematic execution of hostages; it intentionally sows arbitrary death.

And the pattern is clear: while the situation is worse right now in Gaza, Israel will extend it tomorrow to the West Bank behind the wall.

Both Gaza and the West Bank will go on igniting under fire, till they kindle Sderot again too. The bullet-less fire that Israel is shooting at the dispossessed of Gaza is fire that it is also shooting, by proxy, at the dispossessed of Sderot. The siege-fire of Gaza subtly exploits the photogenic suffering of Sderot to justify and conceal the fact Israel's leaders are yet againchoosing war.

The death siege of Gaza is designed to go on igniting the Palestinian community. It is designed to go on exploiting disenfranchised groups inside Israel. It is designed to present the false image of an Israel seeking peace and holding its fire. It is designed, first and foremost, to prevent true political process and a just peace while simultaneously absolving Israel of responsibility for war. The siege imposed in the name of Israel's defense is designed to defend only Israel's powerful, to defend the policies of force and appropriation that serve them so well.

I'm here to tell Olmert, Peretz, Halutz and every individual who serves the government's armies: Your siege on Gaza is a crime. It is unconscionable—under any circumstances, for any reasons. It is a manifestly immoral act.

An ex-Chief of Staff, Moshe Yaalon, just recently evaded charges for war crimes in New Zealand. For now. The world is beginning—maybe slowly but still—to take action against Israel's war criminals. And today, standing with us against the siege, against the prolonged oppression of the Palestinian people, are groups and individuals from one hundred cities and communities in Europe, in North America, in Asia, in Australia.

The crime of this siege is no less shameful or horrific than the crime that brought hundreds of thousands to the city square, twenty four years ago, bearing our shame. Then too, in Sabra and Shatilla, the act was disguised. Then too, there was blind killing of imprisoned helpless victims. Today we again bear our shame to this square and demand of you: Stop. Now. Unconditionally. Stop the crime immediately. Stop the siege.