Members of Kibbutz Ketura, a collective farm in Israel's Arava Desert, share meals under the fluorescent lights of a spartan dining hall. The kibbutz's leaders earn the same pay as the laundry folders: nothing, other than occasional dividends and monthly allowances. Anyone who wants a new air-conditioner to make it through the infernal desert summer has to sign up on a waiting list. Yet Ketura's commitment to socialism hasn't stopped it from forming a partnership with German industrial giant Siemens

Arava Power Company (APC) signed agreements last week with two Beduin clans to build solar fields on their land, the first such deal ever signed, the company announced Monday.

The Tarabin and Abu Karinat families agreed to lease land to APC to build 20 MW worth of solar fields on 370 dunams at a cost of NIS 400 million.