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"But in the longer term we could put the lab-grown ingredients into a 3D printer and print off whatever you want on the space station, such as a steak!"

The first 3D printer in Gaza was smuggled in as parts about 10 years ago, said Dr. Tarek Loubani, a Palestinian-Canadian emergency room physician in London, Ontario.

Replacement light switch covers, Loubani said, were a popular early project for new 3D printer enthusiasts, because they were easy to print — and, for some reason, banned by Israel.

In a 2018 interview, he asked Italian journalist Francesca Borri: “Have you seen how brilliant our youths are? Despite it all. How talented, how inventive, dynamic they are? With old fax machines, old computers, a group of twenty-somethings assembled a 3D printer: to produce the medical equipment that is barred from entry. That’s Gaza. We are not only destitution.”

Among the most vital pieces of equipment at Qaradaya’s rehab clinic was a 3D printer used to create plastic masks, along with software used to scan patients’ faces.