Gaza Blockade Spurs Minds to Develop Inventions that Impress the World, Report

 [15/04/2009 - 04:41 PM ]

Although the Zionist occupation has imposed a suffocating blockade on the Gaza Strip for years, the minds of the besieged Gazans have refused to accept surrender or defeat. They have responded with deep, sophisticated thinking and steadfast patience to create miracles and turn adversity into opportunity.

That’s the nature of Gazans; they’ve lost everything, but they have turned the saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention,” into a tangible reality. Their inventions have impressed the world, bearing eloquent witness to the fact that no matter how bad the siege gets it will not defeat the will of this people or break their resolve.

Life Doesn’t Stop  The Zionist occupation goes out of its way to humiliate the Palestinians wherever they may be, but the intensity with which they have pursued that policy markedly increased when the Palestinian people chose the Islamic resistance movement Hamas to represent their aspirations.

Since then the Israelis have imposed a suffocating siege on the Gaza Strip. They have prevented the entry of the basic necessities of life: medicine, fuel, food, and many other products, allowing in only enough to keep the people from starving to death outright.

The intensification of the blockade has deprived Gaza of the necessary amount of fuel. As a result, many car owners can no longer run their cars, so they remain parked.

It has also increased the general gloom of night, but the Palestinians lit candles to tell the world that Gaza will remain bright and that life will never stop.

However, Gaza’s engineers are thinking and inventing. Engineers Fayez Annan and Wasim Al-Khazindar have developed an innovative response to this challenge by converting a car that runs on gasoline into a car that runs on electricity.

The Seed of the Idea Engineer Wasim Al-Khazindar told the Palestinian Information Center that the idea was sparked by the transportation crisis which resulted from the fuel crisis brought on by Israeli occupation government decision to prevent fuel from entering the Gaza Strip.

Al-Khazindar explained that he had developed expertise with batteries and generators in the course of years spent running the biggest store in Gaza that sells those goods. He assembled an array of batteries and cables (and an electric engine) with which he replaced the diesel engine in an experimental car.

Al-Khazindar added that he developed and installed an instrument to control (current flow), a speedometer, and a gauge to indicate how much charge is left in the battery and the remaining driving range.

The Palestinian engineer hopes to get support for his idea so that he can continue to develop and refine it. He indicated that this conversion process is expensive, costing not less than three thousand dollars.

We Will not Submit to the Siege Al-Khazindar said, “The unjust Israeli siege imposed on us paralyzes our movement and prevents us from a normal life, but we will not succumb to it. We will innovate and continue to upgrade everything in order to reach an advanced stage of development.”

He pointed out that his idea for an electric vehicle is currently being applied to small cars but that plans are under way to apply it to large cars and trucks. He went on to say that the car with an electric generator is working well, runs as strongly as if it were powered by gasoline, is environmentally friendly, and produces no emissions at all.

Al-Khazindar explained that his fellow engineer, Fayez Annan, helped him with the idea of an electronic power control system, and he also helped him install electronic panels. They assembled an AC three-phase alternator, which is a new, advanced idea. It works with batteries and an inverter.