Bohemian founder of a ‘micronation’ created fiefdom off the coast of Israel

Eli Avivi, who has died aged 88, was the self-proclaimed ‘‘president of the independent state of Akhzivland’’, a small ‘‘micro-nation’’ on the northern Mediterranean shores of Israel, just south of Lebanon, which, he was proud to boast, was the only country in the Middle East never to have become involved in military conflict.

Avivi, an Iranian-born Jew, first set eyes on the ruined village of Akhziv in 1952. It had previously been a Palestinian fishing village, known as al-Zeeb, whose residents had fled during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

He fell in love with the place and decided to stay, building himself a house a stone’s throw from the beach and making ends meet by selling fish to a nearby kibbutz.

The tranquil beauty of the place and Avivi’s laid-back lifestyle soon began to attract a bohemian following and Avivi, who habitually dressed in a long white kaftan and later sported a flowing white beard, began a sideline as a photographer, specialising in semi-naked or naked girls. He was described as ‘‘Israel’s No 1 nude photographer’’.

Avivi’s troubles with the authorities began when the Israeli Army, which wanted to clear the area to prevent its previous Arab residents from returning, announced they needed the land for a military base and issued an eviction order, prompting Avivi to protest to the prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who rescinded the order.

Avivi then started to let out lodgings – small wooden cabins which he built himself – and by the end of the 1950s Akhziv had become a popular hang-out for the young and hip. ‘‘People came to see the sea, to take in the sun without bathing suits, most of them smoking grass – it was a place where you came to feel free,’’ Shlomo Abramovitch, a journalist in the area, recalled. Sophia Loren was a frequent visitor and Paul Newman stayed there while filming Exodus (1960).

In the early 1960s Avivi married Rina, but a few years later the Israeli government announced its intention to turn the area into a national park and sent in the bulldozers to demolish the remains of the old Palestinian village and structures erected illegally by Avivi. Then, in 1971, officials erected a fence, cutting off the Avivis’ access to the beach, causing them to rip up their Israeli passports and declare an independent Akhzivland.

They were arrested and charged with ‘‘creating a country without permission’’. But there was no such offence on the Israeli statute book, so the judge threw out the charges.

It was all good publicity, and Avivi found himself hailed as a folk hero. Tourists flooded in and in 1972 he staged a rock festival, which caused 60-mile traffic jams.

He set to work to give the world’s smallest ‘‘democratic dictatorship’’ some of the