Every drop of water counts in war-ravaged Gaza, making Inas al-Gul’s makeshift sun-powered water filter a vital asset for thirsty Palestinians battling endless bombardments in the region’s scorching heat.
Using wood from some of the aid pallets arriving in Gaza, and window panes from buildings largely abandoned during the 10-month war, the 50-year-old agricultural engineer built a glass-covered cistern.
She allows the salt water to evaporate from the pool, which is heated by the greenhouse effect created by the glass panes, distilling the water and leaving the salt behind.
From there, a long black tube carries the evaporated water to other containers filled with activated charcoal to further filter out impurities.
“It’s a very simple device, very simple to use and very simple to make,” Ghul told AFP after taking a long sip from a glass of filtered water at his home in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Abundant Energy
Gul’s device “does not require electricity, filters or solar panels; it operates entirely on solar energy”, which is abundantly available in Gaza, where there is 14 hours of sunlight per day in summer and eight hours in winter.
This has proven particularly useful at a time when Gaza’s only power plant is shut down and electricity supplies from Israel have been disrupted for months.
Due to fuel shortages, Gaza’s desalination plants, which have not been damaged in the fighting, are operating at significantly reduced capacity.
Sweating in the midday sun, displaced Gaza resident Mohammed Abu Daoud said Gul’s invention “came at the perfect time.”
“For almost two months now, we have been totally dependent on it,” he told AFPTV.
This would significantly help those who would benefit from it, as the water available to Gazans currently averages 4.74 liters per day, “less than a third of the recommended minimum in an emergency,” Oxfam reported in July.
That is “less than one toilet flush,” the aid group warned in a report, estimating that the amount of water available per person per day in the Gaza Strip has fallen by 94 percent since the start of the war.
Water was already scarce before the conflict began and much of it was undrinkable. Humanitarian agencies say the population of 2.4 million relies mainly on polluted and depleting aquifers.
‘Water as a weapon of war’
According to Israeli official figures, the war began with an attack by Hamas on Israel on 7 October, resulting in the deaths of 1,199 people, most of them civilians.
At least 40,173 people have been killed in Israel’s counter-offensive in Gaza, according to the region’s health ministry, although the ministry did not give a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.
At the school-turned-shelter where Abu Daoud lives, which is close to Gul’s home, other displaced families have come to rely on water filtration systems to fill their bottles.
The 250-litre tank used to store the clean water gets emptied very quickly.
Oxfam has accused Israel of using “water as a weapon of war”, and warned of a “deadly health disaster” for Gazans, almost all of whom have been displaced at least once.
The aid group has calculated that “Israeli military strikes have damaged or destroyed five water and sanitation infrastructure sites every three days since the war began.”
The report states that the lack of clean water has had a heavy impact on the population, with “26 percent of Gaza’s population falling seriously ill from easily preventable diseases.”
Understanding the urgent need for her equipment and the omnipresent threat of air strikes, Ghul regularly climbs to her roof to keep an eye on her creation and open or close her precious taps.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
