By Alan Johnston BBC News, Gaza

Gaza is under pressure from the embargo and military raids

President George W Bush is expected to repeat his message to Palestinians when he meets their leader, Mahmoud Abbas, at the UN building in New York.

He is likely to say that proposals for a new unity government do not go far enough, with regard to accepting Israel's right to exist, renouncing violence and backing previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements.

The impact of that stance is being felt a long way from New York at a very different type of UN building - a food-distribution warehouse in Gaza City's Shaateh Refugee Camp.

Among those queuing for rations was Ibrahim al-Toul, a man in his mid-40s with nine children.

He is a carpenter who has only found 12 days' work in the last six months.

"Today we go to the employment offices like beggars," he said. "We go to the welfare associations like beggars. Even our own sense of self-worth has been lost."

Losing everything

Behind Mr Toul there was clamour and shouting as horse-drawn carts were loaded. Sacks of flour filled the air with a fine dust that drifted through shafts of sunlight.

Some refugees have been living on handouts for generations

There have always been these kind of food handouts in Gaza. For decades the UN has supported people from families who lost everything when they fled or were driven from their homes in what is now Israel in the war of 1948.

But even by Gaza's harsh standards these are the hardest of times.

Israel, America and the European Union have put the economy under crushing pressure.

They have stopped almost all funds reaching the Hamas-controlled, Palestinian government on account of its refusal to renounce violence and recognise Israel.

Gazans had hoped that the embargo might come to an end with the current moves to form a government of national unity that would draw Hamas into coalition with the more moderate Fatah faction.

No hesitation

The Palestinian government is so short of cash that civil servants have been paid almost nothing for half a year now.

It would be better to be away from my kids and know they have full stomachs than to be with them and not be able to give them anything Ibrahim al-Toul

This great swathe of the middle class has been driven into poverty, and their problems have sent shockwaves through the economy.

"I am $600 (�320) in debt," said Mr Toul. "The supermarket guy asked for the credit he had given me. So I borrowed and paid it back.

"My sons ask me for half shekels to go to school with - but I have nothing. Psychologically, I'm tired.

"I'm thinking about leaving the country. If I find any job or any way to leave I won't hesitate," he said.

"It would be better to be away from my kids and know that they have full stomachs than to be with them and not be able to give them anything."

Tight control

As Mr Toul struggles to survive in a disintegrating economy, Hamas' dispute with the outside world seems remote and meaningless.

More than half Gaza's workforce could be jobless by December

"I blame the politicians - the ones who think that they know what they are doing - from any faction," he says.

"In the outside world nobody cares. It's all a political game. We've been suffering for a long time. Nobody will feel for you unless he feels your pain. And for now nobody feels our pain."

It is not just the sanctions that are wrecking Gaza's always very weak economy.

It is also being broken by very tight Israeli controls on all movement in and out of the territory.

Trade and business life in Gaza is being destroyed.

Israel says that it has been forced to impose the restrictions on account of continual security threats.

Facing collapse

And it is true that Palestinian militants have launched a number of attacks on border positions in the past - and some of them have been deadly.

Gaza faces humanitarian disaster if things do not change

These assaults have come from groups that say they are countering Israeli army acts of aggression, and which regard all of Israel as occupied Palestinian land.

The combination of the sanctions and the prolonged border closures have made a devastating combination.

"We have a humanitarian disaster coming here - and it is coming very rapidly," says Chris Nordhal, the acting head of the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa.

And the latest report from the UN's Conference on Trade and Development backs up that bleak forecast.

It talks of the entire Palestinian economy being on the verge of collapse, and predicts that more than half the workforce will be jobless by the end of the year.

"Projections point to unprecedented unemployment, poverty and social tensions," the report says.