The odor hits you earlier than you even see the tents. Within the al-Taawun camp, wedged between Yarmouk Stadium and al-Sahaba Road in central Gaza Metropolis, the road between human habitation and human waste has been erased.
Pressured to flee their houses by Israel’s genocidal conflict in Gaza, 765 households have arrange makeshift shelters straight on high of and adjoining to an unlimited stable waste dump. Right here, amid mountains of rotting rubbish, they’re preventing a dropping battle towards illness, pests and the psychological horror of dwelling in filth.
Fayez al-Jadi, a father who has been displaced 12 occasions because the conflict started, mentioned the situations are stripping them of their humanity.
“The rats eat the tents from beneath,” al-Jadi instructed Al Jazeera. “They stroll on our faces whereas we sleep. My daughter is eighteen months outdated. A rat ran proper over her face. Day by day, she has gastroenteritis, vomiting, diarrhoea or malnutrition.”
Al-Jadi’s plea will not be for a luxurious lodging, only a mere 40 to 50 metres (130ft to 164ft) of fresh area to stay in, he mentioned. “We need to stay like human beings.”
![Fayez al-Jadi, a Palestinian father displaced 12 times by the war, says rats run over his children's faces while they sleep in their tent atop a solid waste dump in Gaza City. [Screengrab/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/image-copy-1771233044.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80)
‘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 overlaying his small physique.
“He doesn’t sleep at night time due to the itching,” she mentioned. “We get up to seek out cockroaches and mosquitoes on him. We carry drugs, but it surely’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, mentioned disgrace is now not compounding their struggling.
“We’ve stopped being ashamed to say my daughter is roofed in scabies,” she instructed Al Jazeera. “We’ve used 5 – 6 bottles of ointment, but it surely’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 situations 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 consuming water throughout Gaza Metropolis.
However the issue goes deeper than a scarcity of assist. In line with Husni Muhanna, spokesperson for the Gaza Municipality, the disaster is man-made. Israeli forces have blocked entry to the Gaza Strip’s principal landfill within the east, forcing the creation of hazardous short-term dumps in populated areas like Yarmouk and the historic Firas Market.
“Greater than 350,000 tonnes of stable waste are piling up inside Gaza Metropolis alone,” Muhanna instructed Al Jazeera in January.
He defined that the municipality is paralysed by a “complicated 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 now 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 usually are 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 stuffed with snakes and stray cats,” Abu Laila mentioned, 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 alleged to go together with our youngsters?”
His daughter, Shahd, is petrified of the pack of untamed canines that roam the dump at night time. “I’m afraid of the canines as a result of they bark,” she whispered.
Widad Sobh, one other resident, described the nights as a horror film. “The canines bang towards the tent material. … They need to assault and eat. I keep up all night time chasing them away.”
For Um Hamza, the each day wrestle for survival has reached a breaking level.
“I swear by God, we eat bread after the rats have eaten from it,” she mentioned, describing the determined starvation within the camp. “All I ask is that they discover us a greater place, … a spot away from the waste.”
