Photo by: Sharon Udasin

First solar field to be launched in Arava’s Kibbutz Ketura
By SHARON UDASIN
Jerusalem Post – 03/06/2011

A 4.95-megawatt field will begin providing electricity to 3 kibbutzim this summer, a power supply equivalent to 7% of Eilat’s energy needs.

Rolling northward on Highway 90 through the Arava Desert from the Eilat Airport, a sea of blue suddenly became visible in the distance – an oasis in a parched landscape.

“I can’t believe it,” Yosef Abramowitz, co-founder and president of Arava Power Company, told The Jerusalem Post this week, grinning from ear to ear as the taxi approached Kibbutz Ketura. “Everybody tried stopping this – everybody. It’s amazing.”

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Arava Power Company will inaugurate the country’s first solar field at a groundbreaking ceremony on Sunday evening – a medium-sized, 4.95- megawatt field at Ketura that this summer will begin providing electricity to three kibbutzim – Ketura, Lotan and Grofit, a power supply equivalent to 7 percent of Eilat’s energy needs, according to Abramowitz, who made aliya from Massachusetts five years ago.

The visionaries and cofounders behind the project along with Abramowitz were Ketura resident Ed Hofland and American businessman David Rosenblatt. For the three partners, Ketura – located in the middle of the blazing Arava Desert and established 38 years ago by Young Judaea movement immigrants to Israel – was the perfect spot to launch the first field.

“This is the Young Judaea story where year-course students sat around [David] Ben- Gurion and he said, ‘Settle the Negev,’” Abramowitz told the Post, during a flight down to Eilat for an exclusive look at the field. “They fulfilled one of Ben-Gurion’s visions and now 30 years later it’s natural they are fulfilling another of his visions.”

The kibbutz is a major shareholder in the project, which also has received investments from the German Siemens AG engineering conglomerate.

“Ketura is right in the bullseye,” Abramowitz said, referring to the sun’s intense rays in the Arava, which he said is the third most extreme desert in the world and lies along the national grid.

The gleaming field, called Ketura Sun, is made up of 18,500 photovoltaic panels – approximately 200 in each of the rows of side-by-side columns – manufactured by Chinese company Suntech, Abramowitz said.

“We’re also creating one of the largest works of art in the world,” he said, explaining an 80-dunam (8 hectare) image of Ben-Gurion will in the coming months sit atop the solar panels, and will be viewable on Google Earth and to passing aircraft. “We’re patenting it – it will be called the world’s first solar canvas.”

A mezuza in the form of a sundial will be attached to the entrance gate to the field at Sunday’s ceremony, and will be blessed by Rabbi Michael Cohen of the Ketura-based Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, with an additional blessing from Beduin spiritual leader Abu Krinat.

A 1,000-kilogram “statue of Ruth with her bushel of wheat” is slated to arrive before the ceremony, Abramowitz said.

The company has decided to make the field a beacon for social action.

“We’ve designated the four corners for 20 years of donations to four charities,” Abramowitz said. “We want to create a new standard of social responsibility in the solar industry.”

Those four charities are Jewish Heart for Africa; Bustan, which helps Beduin in unrecognized villages in the Negev; the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity; and the Red Mountain Therapeutic Riding Center at Kibbutz Grofit.

“It’s very human because it’s a natural thing,” said Nasser Muhammad, the project foreman, during the tour of the field, which is his first – but presumably not last – solar construction project. “We don’t make pollution, we make good things.”

Following Sunday’s launch, the public will be able to visit the solar field by calling Kibbutz Ketura to schedule tours, Abramowitz said.

High profile attendees at the event are to include National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau, Agriculture Minister Orit Noked, MK Einat Wilf (Independence), MK Shlomo Molla (Kadima), MK Eitan Cabel (Labor) and international hip-hop artist Shyne.

All of those who have been connected to the field’s development and seen it grow are excited about Sunday’s launch.

“It’s the fruit of several years of work,” said Tareq Abu Hamed, director for renewable energy and energy conservation at the Arava Institute. “It’s very important for Israel and for the region.

It’s not because of the amount of electricity it will produce – it’s just the first and it will be I think a successful story for the whole Middle East, that we can do it. This is the way, this is the direction we have to go.”

Mike Solowey, a founding member of Kibbutz Ketura, said, “Because of the experience [Abramowitz] had here after his experience on a year course and his experience on Ketura, he wanted to give back, and his way of giving back is starting the initiative for solar energy and for the last five years he’s been fighting the establishment to get all of the permits that you need.

“We call Yossi ‘Captain Sunshine’ because he is devoted to this whole business of solar energy. He is a shareholder in this company, but he isn’t really doing this for profit. He’s really doing this for all of us, for the environment,” Solowey said For the three company founders, getting this field off the ground was an uphill battle with bureaucracy.

“There are 24 government offices that touched this field here at Ketura,” Abramowitz said. “They are uncoordinated, they do not speak with one voice.”

Before this project, there were no regulations for establishing solar infrastructure in Israel, and while all the government offices said they were in favor of the project from its beginnings five years ago, there were always “buts” along the way, Abramowitz said.

“The entire regulatory, statutory and political framework for the solar industry in the State of Israel is based on this field over here,” Abramowitz said, gesturing toward the 18,500 panels. “This is the field that broke through all the bureaucracy and all the politics.”

Because the back-and-forth arguments with government officials dragged on and on, there were many skeptics along the way, according to Hofland.

“There’s only so many times you can say we are doing it, we’re building it, it’s going to happen,” he said. “But in the end if you keep pushing it succeeds.”

And despite any initial doubts, it made perfect sense for the kibbutz to invest in the project, according to Holfand.

“The kibbutz has a lot of enterprises started by the membership,” he said. “It came natural to us to invest in this company as well.”

While Ketura Sun may have broken through, Abramowitz said that he is still in a battle with the government regarding the company’s newest project, a 40-megawatt “large” field to be built across Highway 90.

Permission for large fields in Israel was granted by the Interior Ministry in early May, but solar entrepreneurs are still facing blocks from the Finance Ministry, according to Abramowitz.

“It’s the first time someone has put their cards on the table and said we want to stop the solar industry in Israel,” he said, explaining that the Finance Ministry is focusing on the fact that natural gas prices are cheaper today, even though solar prices will be cheaper tomorrow.

Currently, he explained, when the city of Eilat has an power supply overload and needs to run backup generators with diesel or jet fuel, it pays NIS 2 per kilowatt-hour, even though solar energy from the medium-sized field would cost only NIS 1.52 and from the large would cost NIS 1.08. If the Treasury blocks are lifted, Abramowitz said that Arava Power is ready to start construction of the large field on January 1.

“There will be blackouts this summer – that should say it all,” he said.

Coinciding with Sunday’s ceremony will be the launch of a coin medallion by the Israel Mint in honor of the occasion, which includes an image of Ben-Gurion looking into the sun and the inscription: “A renewable light unto the nations.”

The etching of the sun is a replica of a similar sun that appeared on coins issued by King of Judea Hyrcanus II during the 1st century BCE, Abramowitz said.

Also on Sunday, the Israel Postal Company will issue a stamp honoring Ketura that comes with a complimentary 16-page booklet. Sunday also happens to be World Environment Day.

“There are these legendary obstacles that have prevented the industry from blossoming,” Abramowitz said. “We’re hoping that the gift of Ketura – the first solar field – will be proof positive that the State of Israel can quickly become a solar superpower. The only obstacle is the instability of the market caused by government zigzags.”

“The valley is naturally made for solar power,” he said.

An interview with Shahaf Shtrikman by Alex Cicelsky

A year has passed since the earthquake rocked Haiti. Within hours of the news of the tragedy an Israel Defense Forces medical team was assembled. The first international medical response team on the ground was the IDF field hospital. First Sergeant Shahaf Shtrikman from the IMPJ community Kibbutz Lotan and a graduate of the IMPJ Mechina leadership program is a medic in an elite IDF unit and was a member of the Israeli medical team that spent two weeks in Haiti.

Following the earthquake a year ago, how did you end up in Haiti?

I recently completed my three years in the IDF. I am an army medic and my unit was stationed at a base in northern Israel. I hadn’t heard the news about the earthquake because we were in intensive preparations for a visit of the IDF’s chief of staff. My commanding officer came up to me and asked me if I wanted to go to Haiti. I thought he was offering to take me to a new restaurant called Haiti as a break from all the clean up and organizing work. He told me about the earthquake and that I had been selected for the IDF’s emergency response team. I said “yes” immediately. I put a few things in my backpack, left the base and three hours later I was at the army’s medical logistics base near Tel Aviv.

What were preparations like at the base?

As you can imagine, there was a bit of confusion. When I arrived, the commanders were still in meetings drawing up the response plans. There was no one to speak with in Haiti after the disaster and the news showed increasing chaos and destruction. Equipment and supplies were packed on the basis that we’d be completely on our own and have to bring with us absolutely everything we would need for two weeks. By the evening, all the soldiers selected from the various IDF units had signed in and we were sent home to pick up our passports and get ourselves ready for a trip to the unknown.

The next morning we received our personal equipment and vaccinations. We received a day of briefings on Haiti and how to treat predictable injuries following earthquakes. At night two planes were waiting for us at the airport. One was crammed full of equipment. The other was an El Al jet for 121 members of the medical team along with 100 soldiers from the search and rescue unit, their dogs, logistic and security personnel. As soon as the flight took off we were ordered to sleep. We were awakened for breakfast and then had organizational meetings for the rest of the 15 hour flight. While we were in flight we received updates on the situation in Haiti which the world was learning was far worse than anyone imagined.

What greeted you when you arrived?

The airport was not functioning. Complete disorder. There was no one to even look at our passports. No one at the airport knew anything about what was going on or was coordinating incoming teams. It was incredibly hot and humid (and I thought I knew hot from growing up in the desert). We got onto busses without air conditioning and drove to our base – an empty soccer field a few kilometers from the center Port-au-Prince. All we had were our personal belongs. It was Friday night so we had Kabbalat Shabbat and fell asleep in the open field. At midnight the trucks rolled in with our equipment and we built the hospital and support camp throughout the night. By 8 am the hospital was operational. At 10 am the first injured citizens arrived. We didn’t have to tell anyone that Israel had set up a hospital. There was no radio or TV working. People found out by word of mouth and the line of injured people got longer as the day went on. By the end of the day every bed was filled. I had no idea what was happening outside of the camp nor had a chance to see the devastation until later in the week.

How did the hospital function?

The hospital was separated into wards: triage, surgery, recovery, children, maternity, the pharmacy and ambulatory care. We had an x-ray unit and an orthopedics unit specifically for all the broken limbs that would be incurred following an earthquake. A surgery center from Columbia was added on after five days and at the end of our stay a Canadian group of doctors joined us. I was assigned to the recovery ward but like everyone I helped with everything. There were many times that I was needed during surgery during which I learned a great deal. Moving patients throughout triage and surgery was done with stretchers – we had no beds with wheels. Both the male and female soldiers were equally active in the logistics. Haitians that were in good health that heard about the hospital came to the camp to volunteer with the labor and the cooking. Few Haitians speak English so we communicated using a sort of sign language. There were a few that had good English skills and worked as translators.

Everyone that needed treatment received it to the best extent that we could supply it. Two doctors, along with security staff, were stationed at the entrance to the hospital camp. They had to manage the dilemma of whom to let in. They let in those for whom we had the equipment and ability to help. Many people with slight injuries and chronic diseases stood in line along with those looking for food. Our job was to save lives that were in immediate danger. As soon as someone was cared for we had to let them go to make room for new patients – and the line was always long.

The hospital was open 24 hours a day and we worked in shifts. It was normal for me to be called suddenly from my work in recovery to assist in a surgery in the middle of the night. The doctors were challenged with caring for injuries they had never seen before.

Family members came with each injured person and we took care of them too with food and water. Personally, I didn’t eat much. I was too busy with the work. Maybe the smell also affected my appetite. The smell from the injuries themselves is impossible to describe. All around us there were people who hadn’t bathed in a long time and the smell of the dead from the city around us was in the air.

I can see in your face that you’re remembering some really difficult moments.

There was a girl that arrived on the first day and had her badly infected hand amputated. She was alone, 14 years old. No one came to take her but she couldn’t stay with us. She became attached to me – physically. She was holding my arm and just couldn’t let go. I was told to take her out of the camp. I went to the hospital commander and he arranged for her to be taken to the United Nations camp. An Israeli newspaper photographer took a photo of us that all of Israel saw but the photo doesn’t show what I was feeling inside.

Later on a man was brought to the hospital and also had to have his hand amputated. He was a big guy, 25 years old and in great physical condition. He woke up from the operation, started speaking in English (one of the few) and was so strong that he got up right away. The doctors knew that he had an invasive bacterial GAS infection contracted when his crushed arm was lying on the ground. It was in his blood. I really liked him and we talked and traded emails. A few days later his condition became critical. I was woken up in the night to help in surgery and found him on the operating table as the doctors removed fluids from his chest. He died the next day. His brother was there with him and wept for a long time.

One of the translators told us his story. He was riding on his motorcycle when the earthquake began. He flew off of it and into the bushes about 5 meters (15 feet) away. He said the earth rocked like crazy for a whole minute. When it was over he went home and found that his entire family had died in the earthquake. We took a group photo with him before we left. He told us that we were his family now. One of my friends, a paramedic with us, is in contact with him still. He told her that the situation in Haiti is the same as it was following the earthquake: chaos and suffering.

We were there 12 days and cared for 1,111 injuries.

Now, a year later – what do you think about the experience?

This was the most traumatic thing I had experienced in my life. It was as if I was in a different universe for two weeks. I saw it but I just can’t comprehend how people live to only survive without family, food or shelter. Since then everything has a different proportion. On my worst days in the army or since while working, I remember what I saw there and I realize that my personal problems are tiny in comparison. It was a “class in the school of life” that I’ll never forget. We did so much, worked very hard and saved many lives but it’s “a drop in the ocean”. I was taught and I believe that “every life is a universe”. I know that each life that we saved was extremely important even if no revolution to change the situation was made.

Is that thought connected to growing up as a Jewish-Israeli?

It made me feel very proud to be a Jew from Israel along with many others like me in the IDF delegation. I definitely felt that I was representing my people. There we were, from a country with really limited resources, from a financially challenged army with other immediate priorities that came from the other side of the world to extend immediate and valuable help and healing. That shows me know how special we are and what our values are. I was on my feet continuously and it never occurred to me to complain about hunger or lack of rest. I gave the job my all, all the time. I certainly wasn’t too pampered to clean up the waste or dispose of the urine. I learned that from growing up in a modest community like Kibbutz Lotan and from my hard working parents. There were times when the soldiers felt the shock and cried. Believe me it was always sad, and I know that the sadness is in me and will need to be brought out. At the time the job had to be done and it was my job to do it.