The smell hits you before you even see the tents. In the al-Taawun camp, wedged between Yarmouk Stadium and al-Sahaba Street in central Gaza City, the line between human habitation and human waste has been erased.<\/p>\n
Forced to flee their homes by Israel\u2019s genocidal war in Gaza, 765 families have set up makeshift shelters directly on top of and adjacent to an enormous solid waste dump. Here, amid mountains of rotting garbage, they are fighting a losing battle against disease, pests and the psychological horror of living in filth.<\/p>\n
Fayez al-Jadi, a father who has been displaced 12 times since the war began, said the conditions are stripping them of their humanity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rats eat the tents from underneath,\u201d al-Jadi told Al Jazeera. \u201cThey walk on our faces while we sleep. My daughter is 18 months old. A rat ran right over her face. Every day, she has gastroenteritis, vomiting, diarrhoea or malnutrition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Al-Jadi\u2019s plea is not for a luxury accommodation, just a mere 40 to 50 metres (130ft to 164ft) of clean space to live in, he said. \u201cWe want to live like human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n The sanitary crisis has unleashed a plague of skin infections among the 4,000 residents of the camp. With no running water or sewage system, scabies has spread like wildfire.<\/p>\n Fares Jamal Sobh, a six-month-old infant, spends his nights crying. His mother points to the red, angry rashes covering his small body.<\/p>\n \u201cHe doesn\u2019t sleep at night because of the itching,\u201d she said. \u201cWe wake up to find cockroaches and mosquitoes on him. We bring medicine, but it\u2019s useless because we are living on trash.\u201d<\/p>\n Um Hamza, a grandmother caring for a large extended family, including a blind husband and a son suffering from asthma, said shame is no longer compounding their suffering.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve stopped being ashamed to say my daughter is covered in scabies,\u201d she told Al Jazeera. \u201cWe\u2019ve used five or six bottles of ointment, but it\u2019s in vain.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that the collapse of Gaza\u2019s healthcare system has left them with nowhere to turn. \u201cThe hospitals, like al-Ahli, have started turning us away. \u2026 They write us a prescription and tell us to go buy it, but there is no medicine to buy.\u201d<\/p>\n The conditions at al-Taawun are a microcosm of a citywide collapse. Hamada Abu Laila, a university lecturer who helps administer the camp, warned of an \u201cenvironmental catastrophe\u201d exacerbated by the lack of sewage networks and drinking water across Gaza City.<\/p>\n But the problem goes deeper than a lack of aid. According to Husni Muhanna, spokesperson for the Gaza Municipality, the crisis is man-made. Israeli forces have blocked access to the Gaza Strip\u2019s main landfill in the east, forcing the creation of hazardous temporary dumps in populated areas like Yarmouk and the historic Firas Market.<\/p>\n \u201cMore than 350,000 tonnes of solid waste are piling up inside Gaza City alone,\u201d Muhanna told Al Jazeera in January.<\/p>\n He explained that the municipality is paralysed by a \u201ccomplex set of obstacles\u201d, including the destruction of machinery, severe fuel shortages and constant security risks. With interventions limited to primitive means, the municipality can no longer manage waste in accordance with health standards, leaving thousands of displaced families to sleep atop a toxic time bomb.<\/p>\n The dangers in al-Taawun are not just biological. Rizq Abu Laila, displaced from the town of Beit Lahiya in the north, lives with his family next to an unexploded tank shell that lies among the rubbish bags and plastic sheets.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are living next to a dump full of snakes and stray cats,\u201d Abu Laila said, pointing to the ordnance. \u201cThis is an unexploded shell right next to the tents. With the heat of the sun, it could explode at any moment. Where are we supposed to go with our children?\u201d<\/p>\n His daughter, Shahd, is terrified of the pack of wild dogs that roam the dump at night. \u201cI\u2019m afraid of the dogs because they bark,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n Widad Sobh, another resident, described the nights as a horror movie. \u201cThe dogs bang against the tent fabric. \u2026 They want to attack and eat. I stay up all night chasing them away.\u201d<\/p>\n For Um Hamza, the daily struggle for survival has reached a breaking point.<\/p>\n \u201cI swear by God, we eat bread after the rats have eaten from it,\u201d she said, describing the desperate hunger in the camp. \u201cAll I ask is that they find us a better place, \u2026 a place away from the waste.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The smell hits you before you even see the tents. In the al-Taawun camp, wedged between Yarmouk Stadium and al-Sahaba Street in central Gaza City, the line between human habitation and human waste has been erased. Forced to flee their homes by Israel\u2019s genocidal war in Gaza, 765 families have set up makeshift shelters directly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Fayez](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/image-copy-1771233044.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018We wake up screaming\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"Six-month-old](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/image-1-copy-1771232395.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
A city drowning in waste<\/h2>\n
Sleeping next to a tank shell<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"