For Israel, Nowhere Is Safe: Gaza’s Displaced Hide Among Trash Heaps

Once owners of spacious villas and modest homes, the Samour family now shelters among the stench of rotting waste. They fled Gaza City under Israeli bombardment only to find refuge in the unlikeliest of places: a landfill.

With Israeli airstrikes still pounding the enclave, displaced families have nowhere left to go. Schools, hospitals, and UN shelters are either overcrowded, targeted, or gone.

“This is not life. This is survival in filth,” said Um Mahmoud Samour, 42, a mother of five from Jalaa neighborhood. She tied a torn sheet between two poles at the edge of a landfill west of Al-Maghazi Camp.
“We had a home. We had dignity. Now we live with rats and the smell of death.”

Gaza City Under Fire

Each day, Israeli airstrikes force hundreds more Palestinians out of Gaza City. Dozens of civilians are killed daily as entire neighborhoods are flattened.

Families are told to flee south to the so-called “safe zone” of al-Mawasi; already overcrowded and repeatedly bombed. Local sources say Gaza City is being emptied, building by building, family by family.

Gaza’s Government Media Office stated that Israel is “systematically bombing towers, residential buildings, schools, and civilian institutions with the aim of extermination and forced displacement.”

Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal added:
“What is falling on Gaza is not just missiles, but barrels of fire and destructive volcanic lava that burn the land and everything on it.”

ICC-wanted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the launch of “a powerful operation in Gaza” named Gideon’s Chariots 2. Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz boasted, “Gaza City is burning.”

The offensive came just as UN-commissioned experts confirmed that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The Illusion of “Safe Zones”

Israeli officials promote images of aid, tents, and services in the south. On the ground, residents say these claims are fiction.

“Such things are non-existent,” the Government Media Office said. “They are propaganda to coerce civilians into abandoning their homes.”

In al-Mawasi, one million people are crammed into just 12% of Gaza’s land. The area has no hospitals, no infrastructure, no water, no food, and no electricity. More than 114 Israeli airstrikes there have already killed over 2,000 people.

“This is forced confinement of 1.7 million people in what amounts to concentration camps,” the Office warned.

No Place Left

Israel’s two-year genocide has reduced Gaza City to rubble. For families like the Samours, displacement has become endless.

“We fled south like they ordered us. Then the south was bombed too,” said Saleh Samour.
“Every place we go becomes a target. So we came here, because no one would think of bombing a dump, though Israel bombs everything.”

The first night, they slept on the street. By the second, they searched for shelter in vain. Overcrowded schools turned them away. Only the landfill was left.

“I cried in pain,” Saleh said. “How could my mother, who always lived with dignity, now be sleeping on the street?”

Living Among Waste

With Gaza’s municipal services destroyed, trash piles high across the Strip. Families are forced to live beside it, exposed to heat, insects, and rats.

“My children are getting sick,” said Reem, Saleh’s wife. “Diarrhea, skin infections, fevers. There is no medicine. Just trash and desperation.”

Municipal workers clear what little they can, but the need is overwhelming.

“This isn’t just displacement. It’s degradation,” said one municipal employee. “People who once lived in furnished homes now scavenge through trash for wood, plastic, even food. It’s a stripping away of humanity.”

Even UN-run schools, already housing 80 people per classroom, have been struck by Israeli fire. Mosques, hospitals, and tent camps are also targeted.

A Plea for Protection

“Even animals live better than this,” Reem said.

Gaza Civil Defense reported that hundreds of families are now sleeping on the ground without any cover.
“They don’t even have plastic sheets for tents,” the group said, stressing that Israel bears “direct responsibility for these conditions that put thousands at risk of death, in grave violation of international law.”

For Gaza’s displaced, the landfill is not just a symbol of waste. It is proof of a world that has abandoned them.