At night, the land breathes differently. The air cools, the wind settles, and what remains is the quiet awareness of the ground itself—its textures, its movement, the life that stirs unseen. In makeshift camps scattered across the southern reaches of the Gaza Strip, families lie awake listening to the scrape of plastic against dirt, the distant hum of generators, and the smaller sounds that come closer after dark.
For those displaced by months of war, sleep is no longer a simple act. It is interrupted by hunger, by cold, and by creatures drawn to the debris of survival. In testimonies shared with humanitarian workers and echoed in court proceedings abroad, residents describe rats running across their blankets, their limbs, even their faces—an image that lingers not for its shock, but for its intimacy. The invasion is not of armies, but of the night itself.
More than a million people have been pushed from their homes since the conflict escalated following the October 7 attacks and the ensuing Israeli military campaign. Many fled north to south, carrying what they could, believing displacement might be brief. Instead, tents have become seasons long. Farmland, roadsides, and sandy lots have turned into crowded settlements, often without sanitation, clean water, or waste removal. In such conditions, vermin thrive, as predictable as the tides.
Aid agencies have documented rising health risks: skin infections, gastrointestinal illness, and the psychological toll of living without privacy or safety. Children wake crying. Parents stay alert through the early hours, guarding sleep rather than entering it. Winter rains have turned some encampments into shallow basins of mud, while food scraps and open sewage draw rodents closer, shrinking the already thin boundary between human life and the exposed earth.
The accusations surfaced during legal arguments in the United Kingdom, where lawyers representing Palestinian civilians described these living conditions as part of broader submissions concerning the conduct and consequences of the war. Their words were not intended as metaphor. They were accounts, measured and sworn, of daily life at ground level in Gaza—where the absence of shelter has become a constant presence.
Israeli authorities maintain that military operations target Hamas infrastructure and that civilian harm is an unintended consequence of fighting in dense urban areas. Humanitarian groups, however, continue to warn that displacement on this scale, combined with restrictions on aid access, creates conditions that degrade not only infrastructure but dignity. When land itself becomes hostile, survival demands an unrelenting vigilance.
As diplomatic efforts stall and ceasefire negotiations falter, the camps remain. The rats will follow the food. The cold will follow the calendar. And families will continue to sleep lightly, if at all, waiting for a morning that offers more than endurance. In Gaza, the war is measured not only in airstrikes and statements, but in the restless hours between dusk and dawn, when the ground will not stay still.
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Sources BBC News Reuters United Nations OCHA International Committee of the Red Cross Save the Children