Amidst the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and the highly distressing images we see every day, I have found the following story to be particularly potent as it is one of ingenuity, female empowerment and also one of hope.

Yesterday, on Aljazeera, I came across a short clip showcasing the solutions a woman agricultural engineer has devised to help her community cope with the severe shortage of drinking water and cooking gas resulting from the Israeli blockade of Gaza. 

I felt compelled to share this clip on my blog and provide a transcript of Aljazeera’s translation of Ines al-Ghoul’s explanations of her innovative solutions. Amidst the ongoing devastation of Gaza, especially in the north, the story of this Palestinian woman’s ingenuity (a true femina fabra – the feminine equivalent of homo faber) stands out as a beacon of hope and it showcases female empowerment as this woman engineer’s water purification system and her solar oven are almost life sustaining for the war-torn community in which she lives.




INES AL-GHOUL AGRICULTURAL ENGINEER, KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA

The suffering of the Palestinian people forces us to try and think up solutions.
I developed a cooker and water purifier powered by the sun’s rays.
We suffer from a lack of clean water water in Gaza. So I came up with this.
The water is salty and polluted.
Salt gathers at the edges. The evaporation process begins, and there’s condensation on the sloped surface.
You can see the water droplets.
The device is working. This fresh water has reached the top.
The water coming down from the device arrives here and is filtered twice through activated charcoal.
It’s clean, free of contamination from our polluted sea. There’s no salt in it, it’s safe for people to drink.
This device can generate enough water for twenty people.
There’s only three of us, so we gave the extra water to displaced people.
I constantly bring water to shelters.
Displaced people drink it and are happy with it.
We haven’t suffered from water shortages. Usually when a car comes with water people start fighting over the water and there are queues. But not in our neighbourhood.
There’s also the solar cooker. It consists of mirrors that reflect the sun’s rays.
It reflects the sun onto the food inside this wooden box, which has a glass panel.
We put the food here and close the door.
See how it is completely closed so that there is no wasted heat.
It can be used to make anything you can think of. We cook all kind of things with it.
We can boil eggs, bake bread, make cakes.
I got rid of the gas stove. I haven’t used a gas stove in around year.
I’ve never suffered from a shortage of cooking gas.
This invention is an alternative to gas and could solve the fuel crisis.


PS: One can only imagine how awful the sound of the Israeli drones must be, probably all day and every day – this has likely been the case for the past 12 months.


Lausanne, the above was published on the thirteenth day of the tenth month of the year two thousand and twenty-four.