Israeli peace pioneer Abie Nathan dies at 81

Abie Nathan, an Israeli peace activist who blazed trails to Egypt and the Palestinians that his country would eventually follow, died on Wednesday. He was 81.

Nathan famously piloted a private plane, dubbed Shalom (Peace) 1, to then enemy Egypt in 1966 and was twice imprisoned by Israel for meeting Palestine Liberation Organisation chief Yasser Arafat in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when such contacts were illegal.

"He was a great fighter against war, poverty and discrimination," Israeli President Shimon Peres said in a statement after Nathan's death in a Tel Aviv hospital.

An outspoken opponent of Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, Nathan was a former pilot for Israel's El Al airline and once the owner of a Tel Aviv restaurant that attracted the city's "glitterati" in the 1960s.

Born in 1927 to a Jewish family in Iran, Nathan served as a British air force fighter pilot during World War II before emigrating to Israel shortly after its independence in 1948.

From 1973 to 1993 his "Voice of Peace" radio station, on a ship anchored off the Israeli coast, broadcast pop music and messages of peace in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Short of funds to continue to operate the station, ceremoniously sank the boat in 1993 following the launch of the Oslo peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

Nathan suffered a severe stroke in 1997 and had been in ill health since.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who once rejected peace talks with the Palestinians but now heads the negotiations with president Mahmoud Abbas, praised Nathan's legacy.

"Abie Nathan loved life, loved mankind and loved peace. He painted Israeli society with special colours of humanity and compassion. We will cherish his memory with love," Olmert's office quoted him as saying.