‘peace Pilot’ Abie Nathan Held for Week After Second Flight to Egypt

Abie Nathan, the self-appointed Israeli “peace pilot” who made a second pilgrimage to Egypt this weekend, trying in vain to confer about Egyptian-Israeli peace with Egypt’s President Nasser, was served with a detention order today when a magistrate went to Ichilov Hospital here, where the man was taken by Israeli police after his arrest on a charge of crossing enemy territory.

Nathan flew from Cyprus to Port Said early this weekend and was promptly shipped back by the Egyptian authorities there. When he landed here, he was arrested. His first “peace mission” flight ended in a similar fiasco in 1965. At that time, however, Israeli police did not press charges against him, considering his adventure a mere prank.

This time, after his arrest, he fainted. It was believed at first that he had suffered a heart attack. However, physicians at the hospital said he was merely exhausted. The detention order served on him at the hospital today gives the police seven days to interrogate the man before proceeding further with the case against him.

Yesterday, Nathan started to stage a hunger strike at the hospital, insisting he would eat only food brought in from his own restaurant in Tel Aviv. However, he was persuaded to partake of the hospital food. Nathan reportedly told police at the hospital that, at Port Said, representatives of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry had given him information which he viewed as “very important, a matter of life or death.” He demanded that he be permitted to talk of those matters with either Prime Minister Levi Eshkol or Labor Minister Yigal Allon.