Rotting showers, rats and animal carcasses inside tents. Reserve soldiers serving at an IDF outpost on the Yellow Line between Rafah and Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip say they are enduring extremely poor sanitary conditions. According to the soldiers, they appealed to their commanders and officials in the Gaza Division but did not receive the response they expected.
"Most of us have logged roughly 400 reserve days since October 7," one reservist said. "We left homes, families, jobs and entire lives behind to come defend the country. We're not looking for sympathy and we're not trying to escape the mission — we're only asking for basic conditions that allow us to live with dignity."
The difficult sanitary situation at the Yellow Line outpost
The reservists say severe drainage problems have created pools of flowing sewage throughout the outpost, attracting massive numbers of mosquitoes, flies and rats. "The showers are rotten from the inside and are located right next to the sleeping tents and the tent where we eat," they said. "The smell, the filth and the overall feeling are those of complete neglect."
The soldiers also described an uncontrolled presence of stray animals at the base. "There are hundreds of cats and dogs roaming the outpost with no control whatsoever. Two soldiers have already been scratched by cats and had to be evacuated for tetanus and rabies treatment. The animals defecate on our equipment, enter the torn tents at night, sleep with us in our beds and sometimes we wake up in the middle of the night to dogs fighting inside the tent itself. There have also been cases of dead animals being found inside the tents. It sounds insane, but this has been our reality for a long time."
The reservists said they approached several military officials multiple times, including the deputy commander of the Gaza Division. "The battalion is doing everything it can to help and improve conditions, but in practice it doesn't have the means to make real change without assistance from above," one reservist said. "The division is not providing the necessary resources and is unwilling to offer a real solution to the problem. The answer we're getting is that the outpost is expected to undergo renovations in the future, so there's no point investing in temporary fixes right now.
He added: "Until that 'future renovation' happens, we're continuing to live here in conditions unfit for human beings. We carry out our mission without complaining, but we feel we've reached a point where it's simply impossible to stay silent about the conditions we're living in. It feels to us that if nobody from the outside sees what's happening here, nothing will change."