The odor hits you earlier than you even see the tents. Within the al-Taawun camp, wedged between Yarmouk Stadium and al-Sahaba Avenue in central Gaza Metropolis, the road between human habitation and human waste has been erased.
Pressured to flee their properties by Israel’s genocidal warfare in Gaza, 765 households have arrange makeshift shelters straight on prime of and adjoining to an infinite strong waste dump. Right here, amid mountains of rotting rubbish, they’re preventing a shedding battle in opposition to illness, pests and the psychological horror of dwelling in filth.
Fayez al-Jadi, a father who has been displaced 12 occasions because the warfare started, stated the circumstances are stripping them of their humanity.
“The rats eat the tents from beneath,” al-Jadi advised Al Jazeera. “They stroll on our faces whereas we sleep. My daughter is eighteen months outdated. A rat ran proper over her face. Each day, she has gastroenteritis, vomiting, diarrhoea or malnutrition.”
Al-Jadi’s plea just isn’t for a luxurious lodging, only a mere 40 to 50 metres (130ft to 164ft) of fresh house to stay in, he stated. “We wish to stay like human beings.”
‘We get up screaming’
The sanitary disaster has unleashed a plague of pores and skin infections among the many 4,000 residents of the camp. With no working water or sewage system, scabies has unfold like wildfire.
Fares Jamal Sobh, a six-month-old toddler, spends his nights crying. His mom factors to the pink, offended rashes protecting his small physique.
“He doesn’t sleep at night time due to the itching,” she stated. “We get up to search out cockroaches and mosquitoes on him. We deliver drugs, however it’s ineffective as a result of we live on trash.”
Um Hamza, a grandmother caring for a big prolonged household, together with a blind husband and a son affected by bronchial asthma, stated disgrace is not compounding their struggling.
“We’ve stopped being ashamed to say my daughter is roofed in scabies,” she advised Al Jazeera. “We’ve used 5 – 6 bottles of ointment, however it’s in useless.”
She added that the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system has left them with nowhere to show. “The hospitals, like al-Ahli, have began turning us away. … They write us a prescription and inform us to go purchase it, however there isn’t a drugs to purchase.”
![Six-month-old Fares Sobh suffers from severe skin infections and asthma caused by the unsanitary conditions at the al-Taawun camp in Gaza City, where displaced families are forced to live atop a solid waste dump. [Screengrab/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/image-1-copy-1771232395.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80)
A metropolis drowning in waste
The circumstances at al-Taawun are a microcosm of a citywide collapse. Hamada Abu Laila, a college lecturer who helps administer the camp, warned of an “environmental disaster” exacerbated by the dearth of sewage networks and ingesting water throughout Gaza Metropolis.
However the issue goes deeper than a scarcity of support. In keeping with Husni Muhanna, spokesperson for the Gaza Municipality, the disaster is man-made. Israeli forces have blocked entry to the Gaza Strip’s most important landfill within the east, forcing the creation of hazardous momentary dumps in populated areas like Yarmouk and the historic Firas Market.
“Greater than 350,000 tonnes of strong waste are piling up inside Gaza Metropolis alone,” Muhanna told Al Jazeera in January.
He defined that the municipality is paralysed by a “advanced set of obstacles”, together with the destruction of equipment, extreme gas shortages and fixed safety dangers. With interventions restricted to primitive means, the municipality can not handle waste in accordance with well being requirements, leaving hundreds of displaced households to sleep atop a poisonous time bomb.
Sleeping subsequent to a tank shell
The risks in al-Taawun are usually not simply organic. Rizq Abu Laila, displaced from the city of Beit Lahiya within the north, lives together with his household subsequent to an unexploded tank shell that lies among the many garbage luggage and plastic sheets.
“We live subsequent to a dump filled with snakes and stray cats,” Abu Laila stated, pointing to the ordnance. “That is an unexploded shell proper subsequent to the tents. With the warmth of the solar, it may explode at any second. The place are we purported to go together with our kids?”
His daughter, Shahd, is afraid of the pack of untamed canine that roam the dump at night time. “I’m afraid of the canine as a result of they bark,” she whispered.
Widad Sobh, one other resident, described the nights as a horror film. “The canine bang in opposition to the tent cloth. … They wish to assault and eat. I keep up all night time chasing them away.”
For Um Hamza, the every day battle for survival has reached a breaking level.
“I swear by God, we eat bread after the rats have eaten from it,” she stated, describing the determined starvation within the camp. “All I ask is that they discover us a greater place, … a spot away from the waste.”
