The bare elements of the Middle East's latest crisis should say it all. Over 600 people killed and thousands more injured in 11 days, hospitals overflowing with bloodied civilians, and 1.5 million people, under fire from air and ground, trapped on a narrow strip of land without adequate water, food or electricity.

But somehow the facts and figures fail to convey the horror that Gaza is inspiring in both seasoned observers of the region and the public.

It's not just me that's feeling shocked. A disabled friend struggles on her crutches to join a London protest about the attacks; a relative not given to campaigning rings for advice. She's already been on a demonstration and written to the Prime Minister. What should she do now?

The Middle East has long been erupting in sudden, cyclical bouts of violence. So what is it about the crisis in Gaza that is so deeply shocking?

Partly, it's due to the tone of the media coverage, different from much reporting of other conflicts. The ban by the Israelis on international journalists entering Gaza has had the unexpected effect of bringing Palestinian voices, rather than western commentators, to the fore.

Instead of parachuting a star war journalist into the war zone as they often do in high profile conflicts, media organisations are having to rely on Gazan residents to be their eyes and ears on the ground.

So local businessman Sami Abdel-Shafi has been reporting regularly for Britain's Channel 4 TV news and the Guardian newspaper, while Gaza-based BBC producer Rashdi Abu Alouf has been doing live pieces to camera from al Shafa hospital, which has been receiving many of the casualties.

Sometimes these newly-conscripted reporters appear visibly exhausted, or patently unused to broadcasting. At times their personal suffering enters the story, as in the case of one cameraman whose younger brother was killed while playing on a roof, and who then went on to film the aftermath for transmission.

The resulting media coverage has an unmediated quality which brings the story closer to home. It's crisis reporting with less "professional" detachment and more humanising force.

The Gaza shock factor also has to do with the way the humanitarian crisis exacerbated by the conflict has become a weapon of war and a tool of diplomacy.

Aid agencies and diplomats cite the growing plight of the population - which comes on top of a humanitarian crisis created by the eighteen-month-long blockade on supplies into Gaza - as driving the imperative for an urgent ceasefire.

There's an uncomfortable dissonance created by the fact that Israelis have denied that there is a humanitarian crisis and point to instances where they are allowing convoys of supplies through Gaza's borders, while the International Committee of the Red Cross declares there is a "full blown humanitarian crisis".

The recent decision by the Israelis to halt military operations for three hours a day to create a humanitarian corridor - in response to international pressure - shows how central humanitarianism is to the politics of this war.

Civilians, already caught up in the physical violence, are being dragged into the war of words too. A three-way row about whether civilians are being deliberately targeted and the numbers killed has been going on between the Israelis, Hamas and aid workers.

Even the worst incident to date, in which 42 people sheltering from the fighting in a United Nations school in Jabaliya refugee camp were killed by Israeli fire, has served to inflame the debate about how much killing of non-combatants is "necessary", with the Israelis claiming that Hamas were firing mortar from the school as part of their policy of using civilians as human shields.

But perhaps the worst thing about the Gaza crisis is the way it makes it impossible to avoid recognising that it is - however you see the rights and wrongs of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - entirely man-made.

And seeing the suffering unfold night after night on our TV screens, we're brought up sharply up against the fact that ordinary people can do little or nothing to end the bloodshed.

It was frustration at this kind of impotence that must have prompted the Norwegian volunteer doctor working alongside Palestinian medics in al-Shafa hospital to send this dramatic text to friends back home.

"We are wading in death, blood, and amputees. Many children. A pregnant woman," wrote Mads Gilbert. "I have never experienced anything so terrible. Now we hear tanks. Pass it on, send it around, shout it out. Anything. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We are living in a history book now, all of us."

The feeling of helplessness is hardly alleviated by the fact that those with the power to influence events - the politicians and others who make up the "international community" - have so far failed to make a concerted attempt to end the crisis.

While it's important to acknowledge that, in its own terms, the political world is making attempts to broker a solution, on a human level it's hard to avoid the thought that the problem stems from a lack of will to intervene rather than a lack of ability.

It's a conclusion confirmed by commentators' analysis of the logic of the crisis, according to which the military action will inevitably continue until enough international pressure builds to bring about a diplomatic solution. Or, to put it more plainly, powerful people get sufficiently embarrassed by the death tolls to stop the killing.

So what we're left with is a scenario in which ordinary people are obliged to stand by and watch people in power effectively stand by and watch other people inflict gratuitous suffering on their fellow human beings - a great recipe for a kind of "bystander's guilt".

For anyone with a humanitarian impulse, the beginning of 2009 has already brought some uncomfortable times.

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