Peace Activist Ends Hunger Strike Protesting Israeli Ban on PLO Contact

Peace activist Abie Nathan on Thursday ended a 40-day hunger strike, staged to protest a ban on Israeli contacts with the PLO, by drinking a cup of chicken soup.

“I didn’t fast to die. I fasted so I can live and others can live,” Nathan, 64, said from a wheelchair in the home of President Chaim Herzog, who had urged him to break the fast.

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat also had asked Nathan to give up the water-only hunger strike.

Nathan, looking haggard but triumphant, insisted he proved his point. However, Parliament rejected a bill last week to repeal the 1986 law that prohibits Israelis from meeting officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization, as Nathan had demanded.

He cited the massive show of sympathy he received from Israelis and Arabs during the strike that he began April 28 in a Tel Aviv hotel.

“Suddenly I realized I was not alone,” he said.

Herzog said they did not discuss the political reasons for Nathan’s fast during their 20-minute meeting. “I approached him on a purely humanitarian basis,” Herzog said.

Nathan said he lost 48 pounds during the fast.

“I was ready to lose more but I didn’t want to injure my body, and there was no point because it was just going to agonize (others),” he said.

Nathan, owner of the offshore “Voice of Peace” radio station, was jailed for four months in 1989 for meeting Arafat a year earlier. He is on trial for a second meeting, facing a maximum three-year jail sentence.