JEBEL AL KASHEF, Gaza Strip - The Abed Rabbos, who kept quiet when fighters turned their farmstead into a fortress and fled when Israel bombed it, are now waiting in Gaza's ruins for aid from its Hamas rulers.

"They have been talking about giving us aid for four days but we haven't seen anything," the 60-year-old patriarch Mohammad says as he sits in the one intact room of a three-storey house bombed into a giant mound of rubble.

"Hamas said this war was a victory. Is this what victory looks like?" he says, gesturing out over the sprawling dirt mounds and towering piles of jagged concrete in Jebel Al Kashef, one of Gaza's most devastated areas.

The Hamas-run government has promised emergency compensation for the tens of thousands of people who lost their homes and loved ones in Israel's massive military assault on Gaza, which killed more than 1,330 Palestinians.

But a week has passed since the guns fell silent and families living in some of the hardest-hit areas have yet to see any of it.

Abed Rabbo has been wounded by Israeli fire twice - in 1967 and 2003 - and his family has been stranded in the Middle East crossfire for decades.

The rise on which they live - Jebel Al Kashef is Arabic for "Lookout Mount" - offers a view of the Israeli town of Sderot on the other side of the border, making it an ideal launchpad for Palestinian fighters who in recent years have fired thousands of crude, homemade rockets at southern Israel.

The fighters dug tunnels under the Abed Rabbos' houses, buried weapons caches in the fields, and launched rockets from their backyard at night, according to several family members.

The Abed Rabbos are not fighters, and are loyal to the Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fateh movement, which was violently driven out of Gaza by Hamas in June 2007 and is today confined to the West Bank.

But they could not stop the armed men who crept into their neighbourhood at night anymore than they could halt the Israeli troops, tanks and F-16s.

"You cannot say anything to the resistance or they will accuse you of being a collaborator [with Israel] and shoot you in the legs," says Hadi, a 22-year-old member of the Gaza clan.

They have lost their homes and most of their belongings in Israel’s 22-day offensive on Gaza, but the Islamist movement has yet to assist them.

"When a fighter from Fateh is killed they send a cheque from Ramallah. When a Qassam fighter [from the armed wing of Hamas] is killed they bring a bulldozer filled with money," Mohammad chuckles.

"But we haven't gotten anything." Ahmed Al Kurd, the Hamas-appointed minister of social affairs, says the government has already compensated people in less-devastated parts of Gaza and plans to start distributing cheques to the hardest-hit areas on Monday.

The Hamas authorities plan to distribute 4,000 euros ($5,200) to each family whose home was destroyed and 1,000 euros ($1,300) for every family member killed in the three-week-long conflict.

But those sums will hardly cover the cost of the destruction left by the war, which the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority has estimated will cost $1.9 billion (1.4 billion euros) to repair.

And reconstruction efforts could be hindered by the unresolved conflict between Israel - which has sealed Gaza off from all but basic goods since the Hamas takeover - and Hamas, which is viewed as a terrorist group by the United States and most of Europe.

"Any activity on the ground in Gaza, we will have to make sure it doesn't fall into the hands of Hamas," Israeli Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog, who has been charged with overseeing the delivery of humanitarian aid, said this week.

Kurd insisted, however, that anyone who wanted to carry out reconstruction work in the territory had to work with his government, and warned against trying to pressure Hamas by withholding aid.

"[The Israelis] think that with humanitarian aid they can achieve what they failed to achieve with the blockade and the war," he said.

Hamas has demanded the complete opening of Gaza's border crossings, something Israel has refused to do since the group seized power.

"They must open the crossings, lift the blockade, and the ceasefire must continue," Kurd said.

"If the crossings are not open there are only two paths, the blockade or war, and the blockade is a slow death... Death in war is more honourable." The political standoff has left countless Gazans stranded between two warring parties. It has confined Mohammad Abed Rabbo, his wife and his pet cat, Mishu, in the cold ruins of a house that could collapse at any moment.

"I am scared to stay here," he says, looking up at the wide concrete slabs leaning against a pillar over his head. "I should live in a tent instead. Then the next time the tanks come I could pack it up and take it with me."