JERUSALEM—A week-long manhunt for the man who fired at patrons of a pub in the heart of Tel Aviv, killing two and wounding several, ended over the weekend when he was killed by police in his home village in the Galilee. His demise, however, left the whole incident shrouded in mystery.
Nashat Melhem, 29, an Israeli Arab, was killed in an exchange of fire with police from the national anti-terror unit who had tracked him down to an empty house belonging to his extended family. Although police had been given orders to take him alive if possible, Melhem bolted from the building and was killed after a brief chase when he exchanged fire with his pursuers with the same semi-automatic gun used in the Tel Aviv killings, police said.
Police are searching for the person or persons who enabled Melhem to escape the scene of the shooting in mid-afternoon on New Year’s Day and transport him to his village of Arara, about 70 miles away. On the way, he shot and killed the driver of a taxi he was in, also an Israeli Arab, apparently when he saw a police roadblock in the distance. Police say it is not yet known whether he had an accomplice before the pub shootings, that is, someone who was party to the attack itself, not just the escape.
The biggest mystery is Melhem’s motive. It is generally presumed to have been nationalistic but there is as yet no clear evidence of that. He had served five years in prison for attempting to snatch a rifle away from a soldier after his cousin was killed by police, a killing whose justification was challenged at the time in the press. This raises the possibility of a revenge killing. Relatives of Melham said he had mental problems. In recent years he had worked delivering vegetables in North Tel Aviv. His employer, an Israeli Jew, has described Melham as "normative" and friendly. "I loved him," he said.
There have been suggestions that the shooting was connected somehow to the specific pub. Melhem had fired from point blank range and then fled without shooting at passersby or at other shops on the busy street, which is the usual scenario in a terrorist attack.
The incident is taken seriously in Israel because it touches on the hyper-sensitive relationship between the country’s Jews and Israeli Arabs, who constitute 20 percent of the population. All residents of Melham’s village interviewed by the Israeli media condemned the pub shootings and spoke of their desire to live in peace with the Jewish population. Yet as police vehicles were leaving the village they were surrounded by youths chanting: "With blood, with fire, we’ll avenge the martyr," which is the chant regularly heard on the West Bank in similar circumstances.
The editor of the Times of Israel, David Horovitz, asked Monday in an editorial whether the cold-blooded pub killings reflected a deep hatred of Israeli Jews that is widely shared by Israel’s Arabs. "Was it unrealistic to think a lasting internal peace could be maintained with a non-Zionist minority separated from Palestinian cousins (in the West Bank and Gaza)? Or are we reading far, far too much into one deadly incident?"