Elation turns to despair as Gazans return to uninhabitable homes in Strip’s north
Hamas claims hundreds of thousands have gone back to northern Gaza, as many residents complain about lack of food, water, power and shelter

The joy of thousands of Palestinian families who made it back home to north Gaza amid the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel is turning to despair as the cold reality of uninhabitable, bombed-out homes and dire shortages of basic supplies sets in.
Many have begun complaining about a lack of running water that forces them to line up for hours to fill plastic containers for drinking or cleaning. With most homes now heaps of rubble as far as the eye can see, returnees have scoured whatever useful items remain from their property to erect makeshift tents.
At night, residential districts laid to waste by Israeli airstrikes and shelling during the fighting with Hamas sink into darkness for lack of electricity or fuel to operate standby generators.
“There is nothing, no life, no water, no food, no drink, nothing for living. Life is very, very hard. There is no Jabalia camp,” Hisham El-Err said on Wednesday, standing by the ruins of his multi-story house in the biggest and mostly densely populated of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps.
His extended family is now huddling in tents, which offer scant protection from Gaza’s mid-winter chill.
Permission for displaced Gazans to return to the north of the enclave was a key demand by Hamas in the ceasefire that halted the fifteen-month war it started on October 7, 2023, when it led thousands of terrorists to invade southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 251 who were taken as hostages. Movement from south Gaza to the north began to be allowed on Monday.

By late on Tuesday, Gaza’s Hamas authorities said most of the 650,000 people displaced from the north by the war had re-entered Gaza City and the north edge of the enclave from areas to the south where fighting was less intense and destructive.
Many of those returning, often laden with what personal possessions they still had after months of being shunted around as battlegrounds shifted, had trekked 20 kilometers (12 miles) or more along the coastal highway.

Fahad Abu Jalhoum returned with his family to Jabalia from the al-Mawasi area in south Gaza but the destruction they found was so pervasive they had been forced to go back south.
“It’s just ghosts without souls (in the north),” Abu Jalhoum told Reuters back in Al Mawasi. “We all missed the north but when I went there I was shocked. So I returned to (the south) until we get relief from God.”
Hamas, Israel, spar over pace of aid deliveries
A Hamas official who spoke on condition of anonymity said smaller amounts of fuel, cooking gas, and tents had been brought into Gaza than what had been agreed in ceasefire negotiations, which Israel strongly denied.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the initial need for tents at 135,000, but the Hamas official said only around 2,000 had gotten in since the deal took effect on January 19.
He also said work to rehabilitate hospitals and bakeries knocked out by the fighting had not begun and urged mediators to ensure more aid flows in, adding that dissatisfaction among armed groups could affect the truce.
A spokesperson for COGAT, the Israeli military agency that liaises with the Palestinians, said that tens of thousands of tents have entered Gaza since the ceasefire and that gas and fuel are being delivered daily in keeping with agreements.

Under the deal, 33 hostages held by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza are to be freed in the first six weeks of the ceasefire in exchange for over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, hundreds of them serving life sentences in Israel for deadly terror attacks.
Seven hostages and 290 prisoners have so far been exchanged. Three more hostages are to be swapped for dozens of Palestinian prisoners on Thursday.
In addition, five Thai hostages will be freed Thursday by Hamas, Israeli officials confirmed.
A second stage of the deal, due to begin by February 4, is meant to open the way to the release of over 60 other hostages, including men of military age, and a full Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza.
If that succeeds, a formal end to the fighting could follow along with talks on the monumental challenge of reconstructing Gaza, now widely demolished in a war that killed almost 47,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose unverified figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

In Jabalia, Khamis Amara returned to the ruins of his house to dig for the bodies of his father and brother, among the roughly 10,000 people missing and feared dead in Gaza, according to the local civil emergency service.
“I was once under the rubble with my father and brother, just as they still are. But I made it out,” Amara said.
“Life here is unbearable. Honestly, it’s all a lie. Those in the south should just stay there — it’s better for them.”