Hussein Shawish was glad to be one of the first Gazans to receive a caravan, but the tent and adjacent shanty his family has been living in since January will not be coming down anytime soon.
"It's better than nothing, but what do you want me to do with all of them," the 87-year-old asks, gesturing to some of his more than 30 children and grandchildren milling around on the rubble of what was their four-storey home.
The 12-square-metre (129-square-foot) pre-fabricated structure, with no toilet or kitchen, would be better suited as a tool shed. But in Gaza, five months after a devastating Israeli air and ground offensive, it passes for a home. Israel's war at the turn of the year, which aimed at halting Palestinian rocket fire, killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, 13 Israelis. It also destroyed thousands of homes and other buildings across the impoverished coastal enclave.
In March, international donors pledged a whopping 4.5 billion dollars in reconstruction aid but the funds have been held up by Western countries' refusal to deal with the Islamist movement Hamas, which rules Gaza.
Meanwhile, crippling economic sanctions Israel placed on Gaza in the wake of the violent Hamas takeover of the territory in June 2007 remain in place, preventing the importation of virtually all building materials.
Aid groups set up tent camps in the hardest-hit areas in the weeks following the war, but the mobile shelters did not appear until earlier this month, when the Hamas government began distributing 192 structures supplied by Turkey.
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) plans to supply an additional 1,200 mobile homes in the coming weeks and months.
Because of the size of his family Shawish was one of the first Gazans to receive a shelter, which was assembled by Hamas men on the ruins of his house in Beit Hanun, a battered town near the Gaza-Israel border.
"I can receive visitors there during the day and the women and children sleep there at night," he says.
But there is no room for his youngest son Yasser, 42, and his wife and four children, who are sleeping in a tent nearby.
"It does not protect us from the cold or the heat and there is no privacy, but we have no choice," Yasser says. "When the Israelis bombed the house it was as though they had taken my soul."
The family fled the fighting a few days before the house was destroyed by an Israeli F-16, Shawish says. They returned when the 22-day war ended on January 18 with Israel and Hamas declaring unilateral ceasefires.
Since then they have seen a parade of international diplomats, aid workers and journalists come to survey the damage in Gaza, but nothing has changed.
"This was a catastrophe. Neither Carter nor Blair came to see our tragedy," he says, referring to visits last week by former British prime minister Tony Blair and former US president Jimmy Carter.
"We live in the street and we don't know why," he adds.
Others are still waiting for the mobile homes to arrive.
Amal, a 22-year-old woman who lost two brothers in the war, is still camping out in a tent on the ruins of Ezbet Abed Rabbo, one of the most devastated areas in Gaza.
"It would be better than a tent. For many months we expected that our homes would be rebuilt, but no one in the world pays any attention to us. They are all occupied with Iran and their beloved Israel," she says.
She adds that the tent, in which she has placed a small wooden cupboard salvaged from the ruins of her home, "is not fit for animals."
Carter may not have visited the Shawish family, but he denounced the deprivations facing Palestinians in Gaza as unique in history and asserted that they are being treated "like animals".
"Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings," he said.
"The starving of 1.5 million human beings of the necessities of life -- never before in history has a large community like this been savaged by bombs and missiles, and then denied the means to repair itself," Carter said.
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