Eight years ago Tony Blair sat in Youssef Abu al-Anzayn’s dilapidated home in Gaza and gave its 50 occupants brief hopes of a brighter future.

Banners adorned the streets, proclaiming, “Welcome, Palestine’s important guest”, and dignitaries squeezed into the shoulder-width alleyways of Shati refugee camp to hear what the poorest of Gaza’s poor had to tell the British Prime Minister on his first visit to the region. That was then. For Mr Abu al Anzayn, who is 40 and unemployed, little has changed for the better, and much for the worse. He and his extended family still remember Mr Blair — but for his smile rather than any tangible benefit the visit brought them.

They still live in the same squalid house, with daylight visible through the cracks in the wall and water running off corrugated-iron rooftops into the central courtyard.

Their expectations that Mr Blair’s latest visit will produce anything of benefit to Palestinians are zero.

“When Mr Blair came into our house he was obviously shocked — he asked how 50 people could live here. I thought he was sincere. I very much expected after what he saw that he would help,” Mr Abu al-Anzayn said.

“Every day after his visit we waited, we hoped that he would do something for us, that somebody would come to rebuild our house or help to improve it. We waited for two years, thinking maybe we were on a list.” Then came the September 11 attacks, and they saw Mr Blair become Washington’s closest ally. Now they expect nothing from him.

“For us he has no credibility among Palestinians,” Mr Abu al-Anzayn said. “We lost hope of the Americans long ago but for a while we thought Mr Blair might do something for us. Now we realise there is no hope of anything from him.”

Mr Blair provides a thread of continuity between pre-intifada 1998 and the violence of today.

In April 1998, as now, Israel’s Prime Minister and the Palestinian President were refusing to meet. Then, as now, Tony Blair sought negotiations to resolve the deadlock with the Palestinians.

Then, as now, Britain spoke of European Union instructors training the Palestinian security forces, the US Secretary of State spoke of a time of “grave danger” in the Middle East, Palestinian leaders complained about Israel’s expansion of Jewish settlements and Israel’s Prime Minister said that a terrorist Palestinian state “could turn out to be another Iran, another Iraq, on our doorstep”.

In the Middle East there is nothing new under the political sun.

Inside their ramshackle home, the Abu al-Anzayns reflect the angry political divisions on the streets outside. On their walls are Hamas posters and pictures of one gunman killed fighting Israelis during the recent siege of Beit Hanoun.

Thirty-nine per cent of Gazans, like Mr Abu al-Anzayn, are unemployed. His joblessness was briefly interrupted by a United Nations emergency relief programme that gave him three months of work collecting rubbish from the streets.

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