As springtime temperatures rise across the Gaza Strip, a burgeoning infestation of rats, fleas, and other pests is compounding the misery of hundreds of thousands of displaced people who remain confined to flimsy tents after more than two years of war. What was once a humanitarian crisis is now rapidly evolving into a public health emergency, aid agencies warn.
With meager shelter, almost no sanitation infrastructure, and garbage mounting in the streets, Palestinians told AFP that vermin are invading their makeshift homes—biting children, contaminating food supplies, and spreading skin diseases. For many, the arrival of warmer weather has not brought relief but a new wave of daily terror.
“My children have been bitten. One of my sons was even bitten on the nose,” said Muhammad al-Raqab, a displaced Palestinian man living in a tattered tent near the southern city of Khan Younis. “I am unable to sleep through the night because I must constantly watch over the children,” the 32-year-old construction worker, originally from Bani Shueila, told AFP.
Because shelters are erected directly on the soft, sandy soil just inland from the Mediterranean Sea, rodents can easily burrow under tent walls, gnaw through thin fabric floors, and wreak havoc inside the cramped spaces where families have established makeshift pantries and open-air kitchens. “The rodents have eaten through my tent,” Raqab added, pointing to holes along the base of his shelter.
Nearly all of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.2 million people has been displaced at some point by Israeli evacuation orders, airstrikes, and ground operations during the war with Hamas a conflict that began after the group’s armed attack on Israel in October 2023. According to the United Nations, 1.7 million people still live in displacement camps, unable to return home or to areas that remain under Israeli military control, despite a ceasefire that took effect in October 2025.
In these sprawling, overcrowded camps, “living conditions are characterised by vermin and parasite infestations,” the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said after field visits in March. Standing water from leaking pipes and seasonal rains, combined with mountains of uncollected waste, has created ideal breeding grounds for insects and rodents.
‘Flooded with sewage’
Dr. Hani al-Flait, head of pediatrics at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, told AFP that his team encounters severe skin infections such as scabies, impetigo, and flea-borne dermatitis on a daily basis. “The severity of these skin infections has been exacerbated by the fact that these children and their families are living in harsh conditions that lack basic public sanitation, as well as a complete absence of safe water,” he said.
Sabreen Abu Taybeh, a mother whose young son has been suffering from a painful, spreading rash, blamed the squalor of the camp where her family now lives. “We are living in tents and schools flooded with sewage,” she told AFP, pulling back her son’s shirt to reveal angry red welts covering his upper body. “I have taken him to doctors and hospitals, but they are not helping with anything. As you see, the rash remains.”
“The summer season has brought us rodents and fleas,” said Ghalia Abu Selmi, 53, another displaced resident of Khan Younis. She made the discovery after mice gnawed through hand-embroidered clothes she had been saving for her daughter’s upcoming wedding. “Fleas have caused skin allergies not only for children but for adults as well,” she said, sorting through a pile of garments now riddled with small holes inside the dim tent she calls home.
Abu Selmi said her family has been displaced 20 times since October 2023 and has yet to return to their home in the town of Abasan al-Kabira, near the Israeli border. “Every time we think we can go back, the army issues new orders or the fighting resumes. We have nothing left.”
Ceasefire holds, but crisis deepens
Despite the ceasefire, Israel continues to control all access points into Gaza, with tight inspections and frequent rejections or delays of aid deliveries, according to NGOs and the UN. This has caused chronic shortages in everything from medicine and fuel to clothing, soap, and food items that could help families protect themselves from infestations.
Aid workers say that basic pesticides, rodent traps, and even protective sheeting are largely unavailable on the local market. Meanwhile, airstrikes and firefights between Israel’s military and what it says are Hamas fighters still occur near-daily, further limiting humanitarian access and psychological stability.
According to the territory’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority, at least 777 people have been killed by Israel’s military since the start of the ceasefire. The Israeli military says five of its own soldiers have also been killed in Gaza over the same period.
For now, families like Raqab’s are left with few options. “We burn old plastic and rubber to try to keep the rats away,” he said, “but the smoke makes the children cough, and the fleas always come back by morning.”
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