By Michael Zeff/TPS
Israel police, aided by IDF soldiers and volunteers, are still conducting a large scale manhunt after Nashat Melhem, the Israeli Arab terrorist who killed three and injured seven in a Tel Aviv shooting attack on New Year’s Day.
A Muslim Arab from east Jerusalem has also joined the efforts to capture Melhem. Mazen Qaq who acts as the chairman of the Committee of Jerusalem’s Old City Merchants, has offered a substantial cash reward for any viable information which will lead to Melhem’s capture.
“If I saw him today I would capture him myself, or at least do whatever it takes for him to be captured,” Qaq told Israeli press on Tuesday.
Qaq, who is willing to pay $10,000 of his own money as a reward, told Israeli press that he considers himself to be an Israeli Arab and not a Palestinian, and that he represents many Arab business owners in Jerusalem.
“We need to stop with the ‘Arab against Israeli’ narrative, we are all cousins who wish to live in peace,” explained Qaq. “This is a man who acted against citizens of Israel, I will not let a man like that destroy our security and our mutual trust.”
Qaq explained that he was motivated to take this course of action out of the need to restore the trust and close relations between Israeli-Arabs and Israeli Jews, which according to him has been damaged by the recent wave of terrorism.
However, not everyone is as enthusiastic about Qaq’s award initiative. “Whoever is offering money, or whatever initiative someone has taken is completely irrelevant to the operation,” Chief Inspector Micky Rosenfeld, the Israel police foreign press spokesman told Tazpit Press Service (TPS).
“We are working on an operational level and on an intelligence level for a realistic solution,” explained Rosenfeld.