George Galloway was given a triumphant welcome today as he led an aid convoy into the impoverished Gaza Strip after a month-long journey across Europe and North Africa to the Hamas-ruled enclave.

Having been made to wait for a day at the southern Rafah border crossing by Egyptian authorities, the staunchly pro-Palestinian Respect MP for Bethnal Green was finally allowed into the blockaded territory, where he was handed flowers and kissed by Palestinian well-wishers.

Mr Galloway and his companions fell to their knees and bowed to the ground as they walked in.

“I have entered Palestine many times but the most emotional of these is after the 22-day genocidal aggression against the Palestinian people,” he said, referring to Israel’s offensive to end Palestinian rocket fire and smash Hamas.

The Scottish politician had been stuck on the border at Rafah as he haggled with Egyptian authorities who had refused to allow entry to ambulances, a fire engine and food aid he was bringing in with his Lifeline to Gaza convoy.

Egypt has signed an agreement with Israel to keep tight controls on the border, and in any case is no friend of Hamas, which is linked to its own Muslim Brotherhood opposition, or of Mr Galloway, who has publicly called for the army to overthrow Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s authoritarian president.

One of the convoy organisers said the £1 million aid shipment had been stoned and vandalised at the Egyptian town of Al Arish, close to the Gaza border, and several of its members injured. “It’s an absolute disgrace,” Yvonne Ridley said. “The power was cut. During cover of darkness members of our convoy were attacked with stones. Vandals also wrote dirty words and anti-Hamas slogans.”

Gaza is in desperate need of aid, and despite pledges of billions of dollars in aid made by the international community at a donors’ conference last week, only the bare minimum of survival rations are being allowed in by Israel and Egypt.

In the Gaza suburb of Hay al-Salaam, one of the worst hit areas in the Israeli offensive, some families are living in ragged shacks on the rooftops of their crumpled apartment blocks, looking out over a wasteland of tents where their relatives and neighbours now live in absolute poverty.

“I lost 30 years of my life in this house,” said Ziad Khadr, 45, who built a hovel of tarpaulin, planks and cardboard boxes on top of the four-storey apartment block he built for himself and his children.

The building, including the supermarket that provided the family livelihood, is now a pile of rubble.

“All my savings I put in this house,” he said, looking out over the neighbourhood of crushed apartment blocks and tents. Even the mosque was destroyed, now replaced by a long tent. Pointing to a small plastic tub where his children wash, he said that his middle-class family had once had a Jacuzzi and private bathrooms. “Now they are lucky if they wash once a week,” he said.

His family has nowhere else to go, and is tied to the site by a lifetime of memories. They sit outside the hut on plastic chairs, shaded from sun and rain by a broken satellite dish turned into an umbrella.

“They take your past, your present and your future,” said Mr Khadr.

Other destroyed houses nearby have been abandoned, their owners’ names and mobile phone numbers spray painted on the smashed concrete to allow aid agencies to contact the refugees for handouts.

Gaza was once a vast refugee camp after the 1948 war of Israel independence: those tent cities gradually solidified into shanty towns. Now the Israeli offensive has reduced some areas back to their grim origins.

Not far from Mr Khadr’s smashed house, huge swathes of industrial sites and factories have been systematically destroyed by Israeli warplanes and sappers, leading many Palestinians to accuse Israel of waging economic warfare against Gaza.

Across Gaza City, policemen have returned to duty but sit in the ruins of their police stations.

Despite the aid pledges, almost no cement has been allowed into Israel for close to two years. Ihab al-Ghusain, an interior ministry spokesman, said that even if materials were allowed, Hamas probably would not bother rebuilding its police stations. “We know the Israelis will come and target it again,” he said.

Hamas officials say that they won the war, since Israel has failed in its stated war aims of ending militant rocket fire and toppling the Islamist regime. And a poll released today showed that Hamas’ popularity has only grown since the fighting, with its leader Ismail Haniyah receiving the support of 47 per cent of Palestiniansto just 45 percent for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and Fatah leader.

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