FROM HOPE TO DESPAIR: No homes, no water, nofood, no electricity  —AP

Agencies CAIRO/GAZA

The nightmare for war-ravaged Palestinian families returning home in north Gaza after a ceasefire with Israel has not ended. Their joy has given way to despair as the cold reality of uninhabitable, bombed-out homes and dire shortages of basic supplies sets in.

With most homes now heaps of rubble, the returnees have scoured whatever useful items remain from their property to erect makeshift tents. In the evenings, the once residential areas plunge into darkness due  to lack 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-storey 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.

By late 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 km or more along the coastal highway

Fahad Abu Jalhoum who returned with his family to Jabalia from the Al Mawasi area in south Gaza was quoted by Reuters as saying,  "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."