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’s 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.Fayez al-Jadi, a father who has been displaced 12 times since the war began, said the conditions are stripping them of their humanity.“The rats eat the tents from underneath,” al-Jadi told Al Jazeera. “They 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.”Al-Jadi’s 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. “We want to live 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 near a solid waste dump in Gaza City [Screengrab/Al Jazeera]‘We wake up screaming’The sanitary crisis has unleashed a plague of skin infections am …
