President Yitzhak Navon appealed yesterday to Israeli “peace pilot” Abie Nathan to end his three-week hunger strike. “It is not the way to achieve the goal–peace–that you and all of us want,” the President wrote to Nathan.
Nathan who has been subsisting on water for the past three weeks, is in a weakened condition and confined to a wheel chair. He has managed to travel nevertheless between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Replying to Navon’s letter, he said he was moved by the President’s concern for his health but will not take food until the military government on the West Bank is abolished and the government officially declares there will be no more settlements in the occupied Arab territories.
Nathan gained international attention in the 1960s when he piloted his own plane twice to Egypt as a one-man peace mission to the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser. On both occasions, he was promptly ousted from that country.
More recently, Nathan acquired a “peace ship” with the contributions of friends. Anchored in international waters, it broadcast peace messages, interspersed with pop music to Israel and the Arab countries.
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