Nathan, Israeli peace activist

JERUSALEM -- Abie Nathan, a maverick Israeli peace pioneer, an entrepreneur and a one-man humanitarian aid organization, who went from playboy to intrepid "peace pilot," died Wednesday in Tel Aviv. He was 81.

The cause was various illnesses he had had for years, a spokeswoman for Ichilov Hospital said.

Nathan lived an unconventional life of adventure and diversity. He first became known in the 1960s after a hamburger restaurant he opened in Tel Aviv took off, enabling him to become a bon vivant who gave legendary parties. He became a darling of the city's bohemian set.

He went on to organize emergency aid for the hungry, from Biafra to Cambodia, sometimes turning to Israeli and foreign governments for help.

But he is best remembered for his quirky quest for peace in a 30-year campaign waged through a series of audacious escapades by land, air and sea.

A Royal Air Force-trained pilot, he crashed into the national consciousness and the quagmire of the Middle East conflict with a dramatic solo flight from Israel to Egypt in an old rented biplane in 1966. A self-appointed ambassador, he wanted to talk to President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt about making peace.

After a forced landing in the enemy territory of Port Said, he was allowed to stay overnight in Egypt before being sent back to Israel. He never got to see Nasser.

Eleven years and two major wars later, the next president of Egypt, Anwar el-Sadat, flew to Israel in an overture that led to a treaty.

At first Nathan was seen as "a curiosity" in Israel, said Eitan Haber, a veteran Israeli journalist and former senior aide of the late prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. "But then it turned out he was ahead of his time," he said.

After a few more unsuccessful peace flights, Nathan turned to the sea, raising funds to turn an old ship into a floating pirate radio station, The Voice of Peace. Mostly anchored off the coast of Israel, the station started broadcasting in English "from somewhere in the Mediterranean" in 1973. It gained a devoted audience around the Middle East over the next 20 years with a potent mix of popular music and messages of love and peace.

Abraham Jacob Nathan was born in 1927 to a well-to-do Jewish family in the city of Abadan, Iran.

After training as a pilot and working for Air India, he emigrated to the new state of Israel and volunteered as a combat pilot in the 1948 war.

He was always ready to pay a personal price for his principles, embarking on numerous hunger strikes; he also served two terms in jail, in 1989 and 1991, for breaking a law against meeting with Yasser Arafat and other officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization, then banned in Israel as a terrorist group.

After receiving his six-month sentence in 1989, he said: "Violence will only increase, and it will be impossible to heal the wounds, whether among the Arabs or the Jews, unless we decide to sit with each other. Our bullets alone cannot solve the problem."