Gazan Tailor Turns to Bicycle to Power Sewing Machine

Raad Saad powers his sewing machine in the ruins of his factory as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas rages (Photo grab from Reuters video)
Raad Saad powers his sewing machine in the ruins of his factory as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas rages (Photo grab from Reuters video)
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Gazan Tailor Turns to Bicycle to Power Sewing Machine

Raad Saad powers his sewing machine in the ruins of his factory as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas rages (Photo grab from Reuters video)
Raad Saad powers his sewing machine in the ruins of his factory as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas rages (Photo grab from Reuters video)

In Gaza, where energy is scarce, one Palestinian tailor has found a way to make the wheel of his sewing machine turn again in the chaos of war.

With a bicycle and help from his children, Raad Saad powers his sewing machine in the ruins of his factory as the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas rages.

Ten months into the war that has created severe fuel shortages and skyrocketing costs for alternative energy, Saad said the bicycle offered a glimmer of hope.

Saad was not always behind the machine. Before the war erupted, he ran a factory and employed 20 workers.

"I used to import and export every day," he recalled.

According to Reuters, Saad's factory and his home in the same building were damaged by Israeli shelling and airstrikes. He managed to secure a small part of it, where he now works.

He used bricks and fabric to set up the bicycle-powered machine. Saad's 13-year-old son Issa turns the pedals as his father sews.

"There is no money. This is why we came up with the alternative way, using small batteries and LED, and we are moving forward," Saad explained.

Saad has been displaced four times in the war, like many of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians who struggled to make a living during the best of times in one of the world's most densely populated places.

Aside from trying to find a safe place to hide from the bombing, Palestinians also face a humanitarian crisis with severe shortages of power, fuel, water and medicine.



Gaza Burns Cases Surge as Medical Supplies Dwindle

Palestinian Nisrine al-Najar receives treatment at a clinic set up by Doctors Without Border (MSF) in Rafah, in March Medical facilities have in the past weeks reported increasing numbers of burn victims. According to Muhammad al-Mughayyir, of Gaza's civil defence agency, Israeli forces have been using "new weapons that cause increased ignition and burning". © MOHAMMED ABED / AFP/File
Palestinian Nisrine al-Najar receives treatment at a clinic set up by Doctors Without Border (MSF) in Rafah, in March Medical facilities have in the past weeks reported increasing numbers of burn victims. According to Muhammad al-Mughayyir, of Gaza's civil defence agency, Israeli forces have been using "new weapons that cause increased ignition and burning". © MOHAMMED ABED / AFP/File
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Gaza Burns Cases Surge as Medical Supplies Dwindle

Palestinian Nisrine al-Najar receives treatment at a clinic set up by Doctors Without Border (MSF) in Rafah, in March Medical facilities have in the past weeks reported increasing numbers of burn victims. According to Muhammad al-Mughayyir, of Gaza's civil defence agency, Israeli forces have been using "new weapons that cause increased ignition and burning". © MOHAMMED ABED / AFP/File
Palestinian Nisrine al-Najar receives treatment at a clinic set up by Doctors Without Border (MSF) in Rafah, in March Medical facilities have in the past weeks reported increasing numbers of burn victims. According to Muhammad al-Mughayyir, of Gaza's civil defence agency, Israeli forces have been using "new weapons that cause increased ignition and burning". © MOHAMMED ABED / AFP/File

In Gaza City's Al-Ahli Hospital, five-year-old Amir Habib al-Habeel screams out in pain from the burns he suffered from an Israeli air strike on his home in Shujaiya a fortnight earlier.
He occupies a bed far from his mother, who also suffered burns, and who cannot move to be by her son's side.

Instead, her brother cares for him, the only available guardian after his "father was martyred", as the tearful child says, struggling to remove one of many IV tubes.

"We receive daily cases of second- and third-degree burns as a result of rocket attacks and the use of internationally banned weapons by the Israeli army," Amjad Eleiwa, an emergency doctor at the hospital, told AFP.

"Most of the cases that come to us are children and women. We don't have any capacity to deal with these burns," he said, explaining that they could not access any of the medical supplies needed to treat burns and had to resort instead to whatever was available in private warehouses and pharmacies.

"We are in dire need of medical and logistical support and medicine to deal with these cases and save them."ch
Medical facilities have in the past weeks reported increasing numbers of burn victims. According to Muhammad al-Mughayyir, of Gaza's civil defence agency, Israeli forces have been using "new weapons that cause increased ignition and burning".
Medical facilities have in the past weeks reported increasing numbers of burn victims.

Julie Faucon, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders (MSF), told AFP some of the charity's specialists have been working for two months in Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis, "supporting what we call the trauma auto burn unit".

In that time, they have received "more than 69 cases with burns. One case out of five is related to explosions", the burns specialist said.

"Three out of four" of the patients they have received are children, she said, adding that 10 of the patients have had burns on more than 20 percent of their bodies.

According to Muhammad al-Mughayyir, of Gaza's civil defence agency, Israeli forces have been using "new weapons that cause increased ignition and burning".

Mughayyir said the weapons reach extremely high temperatures and are "capable of melting bodies".

They often target "tent areas made up of nylon containing primitive materials such as wood and plastic, all of which directly affects the speed and rate of ignition", he added.

"These burns have a direct impact on people's lives and appearances. They affect skin layers and burn nerves, and there are people who become disabled as a result of that."

- No medical supplies

Access to treatment abroad has been blocked as most Palestinians cannot leave the besieged Gaza Strip
The World Health Organization has said that out of 36 hospitals in the territory, only 15 are partially functional, adding that medical facilities have been targeted more than 1,000 times since war broke out on October 7.

Mohammed Zaqout, the head of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, said "there is only Nasser Hospital in the southern areas, with 12 operating rooms, all of which are overcrowded".

"There are 16 beds in the intensive care units, all of which are occupied, and we have added a capacity of 24 beds but they are now full," he said.

"We try to distribute these cases to field hospitals, but the occupation's massacres against unarmed civilians occur on a daily and hourly basis, and no one in the world intervenes."

Access to treatment abroad has been blocked as most Palestinians cannot leave the besieged territory, as has the entry of most medical supplies, particularly since Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt since early May.

Faucon similarly highlighted the urgent need for medical supplies, pointing to surging demand among extremely meagre stocks.