“Rats running in our faces” describes the experience of Gaza’s displaced people who are forced to live on infected land due to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The smell comes even before you can see the tent. In the al-Taawun camp, located between Yarmouk Stadium and al-Sahaba Street in central Gaza City, the line between human habitation and human waste has blurred.

765 families forced to flee their homes due to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza have set up temporary shelters right above and near a giant solid waste dump. Here, amidst mountains of rotting garbage, they are battling against diseases, pests, and the psychological terror of living in filth.

Father Faiz al-Zadi, who has experienced 12 displacements since the start of the war, claims that the living conditions are depriving him of his humanity.

“The rats eat the tents from underneath,” al-Zadi told Al Jazeera. “They run across our face while we sleep. My daughter is 18 months old. A rat runs across her face. Every day, she has gastroenteritis, vomiting, diarrhoea or malnutrition.”

Al-Zadi’s petition is not for any luxury housing, he said, but merely for 40 to 50 meters (130 feet to 164 feet) of clear space to live in. “We want to live like humans.”

‘We wake up screaming.’

The sanitation crisis has sparked an epidemic of skin infections among the camp’s 4,000 residents. The lack of running water and a sewage system has led to the rapid spread of scabies.

Six-month-old baby Fares Jamal Sobh spends his nights crying. His mother points out the red, angry rashes on his little body.

“He can’t sleep at night because of the itching,” she said. “We wake up and see that there are cockroaches and mosquitoes on it. We bring medicine, but it is useless because we are living on garbage.”

Um Hamza, a grandmother who cares for a large family including a blind husband and a son who suffers from asthma, said shame no longer eases her suffering.

“We have stopped being ashamed to say that my daughter has scabies,” she told Al Jazeera. “We have used five or six bottles of ointment, but it is in vain.”

He said the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system has left them with nowhere else to go. “Hospitals like Al-Ahli have started turning us away. … They write us a prescription and ask us to buy it, but there is no medicine to buy.”

city ​​in ruins

The conditions at al-Taawun are a microcosm of the citywide collapse. Hamada Abu Laila, a university lecturer who helps run the camp, warned of an “environmental catastrophe” due to the lack of sewage networks and drinking water in Gaza City.

But the problem goes deeper than lack of support. According to Gaza Municipality spokesman Hosni Muhanna, the crisis is man-made. Israeli forces have blocked access to the Gaza Strip’s main landfill in the east, forcing the creation of dangerous temporary dumps in populated areas such as Yarmouk and the historic Firas Market.

“More than 350,000 tonnes of solid waste are accumulating inside Gaza City alone,” Muhana told Al Jazeera in January.

He explained that the municipality has been paralysed by a “complex set of constraints”, including the destruction of machinery, severe fuel shortages and persistent security risks. With interventions limited to primitive means, the municipality can no longer manage waste according to health standards, leaving thousands of displaced families sleeping on top of toxic time bombs.

sleeping next to a tank shell

The threats in Al-Taawun are not just biological. Rizq Abu Laila, displaced from the city of Beit Lahiya in the north, lives with his family next to an unexploded tank shell amid garbage bags and plastic sheets.

“We are living next to a garbage dump full of snakes and stray cats,” Abu Laila said, pointing to the ordnance. “It’s an unexploded shell right next to the tent. With the heat of the sun, it could explode at any moment. Where should we go with our children?”

Their daughter, Shahad, is afraid of the pack of wild dogs that roam the garbage heap at night. “I’m afraid of dogs because they bark,” she whispered.

Widad Sobh, another resident, described the nights as a horror movie. “The dogs pounce on the tent fabric…they want to attack and eat. I stay up all night to drive them away.”

For Um Hamza, the daily struggle to survive has reached a tipping point.

“I swear to God, we eat bread after the rats have eaten it,” he said, describing the terrible hunger in the camp. “I just want the authorities to find a better place for us, one that is away from the garbage.”