As Palestinians look for shelter, some pitch their tents next to landfill in Gaza City

Palestinians in Gaza say they have nowhere to go as Israel’s renewed offensive forces thousands to leave their homes and once again face displacement in the war-ravaged territory.

Some Palestinians pitched their tents next to mounds of garbage at a landfill near the Yarmouk Stadium in Gaza City after being ordered by the Israeli army to evacuate the north and head toward the south.

Holding an empty water jug in hand, Widad Sobh said she ended up in Yarmouk Stadium along with her family after being forced to evacuate Beit Lahiya this week amid the renewed Israeli fighting and ground invasion.

“We can’t find a place to go,” the 47-year-old told CBC News on Friday. “This is the place I found and I stayed here, where should I go?”

“It’s all garbage. We came to garbage, and the water isn’t clean,” said Sobh.

Sabah Marouf, 50, said she was also displaced from Beit Lahiya after fleeing the bombardment, and ended up at the former football stadium now overflowing with waste.

“We can’t find anyone to help us or anyone to even look at us in the face,” Marouf told CBC News freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife.

“We’re next to the garbage and the smell is killing us, and the dirt is killing us.”

“When it rains our mats and blankets are all water … we were drowning in water here,” Maazouza Fathi Sobh said.

The 48-year-old grandmother said she and her grandchildren are sick from being so close to the landfill and not having proper shelter from the elements, which mix with the waste and flow into the tents.

“It seeps into our mats and on us and we wake up finding ourselves soaked in the (garbage) water,” she said. Children in the area plugged their noses as the landfill odour wafted through the area.

A fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas collapsed earlier this week, as Israel’s renewed offensive has killed more than 600 Palestinians in Gaza since Tuesday.

Shadi Al-Ashqar, a resident from the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, fled on foot toward the south with his wife and children — once again not knowing where to find shelter.

“We were settled in our homes even with all of the destruction surrounding us but we accepted it and made do with what we could,” Al-Ashqar told El Saife on Friday.

“We’re scrambling now, I don’t know where to go.”

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Friday that the army is exerting all available pressure on Hamas to release remaining hostages, including evacuating Gazans to the south and implementing U.S. President Donald Trump’s resettlement plan. In February, Trump called the enclave a “demolition site,” saying he wants the U.S. take ownership of the land and build it into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” once he empties it of the Palestinians.

Katz said Friday the longer Hamas refuses to release the remaining hostages, “the more territory it will lose to Israel.”

Israeli forces have re-taken part of the Netzarim corridor that divides the north and the south of Gaza. It also resumed enforcing a blockade on northern Gaza including Gaza City after advancing Thursday toward the northern town of Beit Lahiya and the southern border city of Rafah.

Meanwhile, a blockade on the entry of goods into Gaza has been in place since March 2, leading to a hike in prices of essential foods as well as fuel, forcing many to ration their meals. It also cut off its electricity supply to Gaza, slashing operations at a water desalination plant that provides clean drinking water to Palestinians.

“There is no food. They starve us, they displace us, they close the border crossings on us,” said Umm Mahmoud Ghazal as she fled northern Gaza Thursday.

“On top of all of that, they are bombing us all night,” she said.

Much of the infrastructure and housing across the Gaza Strip — which is about 41 kilometres long and 10 kilometres wide — has been destroyed by Israeli bombardment.

The majority of Gaza’s population has been displaced inside the enclave multiple times in the 17-month long war.

Late on Thursday, Israel’s military said it had begun ground operations in the Shaboura district of Gaza’s southernmost city Rafah, which abuts the Egyptian border.

“War is back, displacement and death are back, will we survive this round?” said Samed Sami, 29, who fled Shejaia to put up a tent for his family in a camp on open ground.

Thousands of Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies, and abducting 251 hostages into Gaza. Fifty-nine hostages are still being held in Gaza, with 24 of them believed to be alive.

The Israeli campaign in response has killed more than 49,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, with thousands more believed to still be under the rubble.