Nashat Milhem to be buried Sunday in small, subdued ceremony

The funeral of Nashat Milhem, the 29-year-old gunman who murdered three Israelis in Tel Aviv on January 1 and who was killed in a shootout with police on Friday, will be held Sunday in his hometown of Arara.

The Milhem family said the ceremony would be small and private and, like the mourning tent which was erected in the family home on Saturday, would not seek to draw attention to itself.

The family reportedly wishes to avoid any political elements at the funeral.

“We have decided to hold only a minimal funeral,” a relative to Channel 2 news. “We don’t want to cause any commotion or confrontations.”

According to Channel 2 news, Milhem’s father Mohammed — who has been under arrest in recent days on suspicion of aiding his son evade apture — will likely be released and allowed to attend the ceremony.

Milhem will be buried in the cemetery of Wadi al Qasab mosque in Arara, alongside his cousin who was killed by police fire in 2006.

Few people visited the Milhem home on Saturday, and family members declined to talk to the media, a move neighbors said was “so as to avoid making it into a major issue,” the Haaretz daily reported.

“It is true that this was a difficult incident and he is being treated as an arch-terrorist, but the family has lost a son. Every mother cries for her son, even if he turned out to be an unruly child who caused her sorrow. He is still their child,” a relative said, according to the Walla news website.

Security forces say Milhem hid in Arara since fleeing Tel Aviv on Friday, January 1, following the murders of Alon Bakal and Shimon Ruimi at a bar on Dizengoff Street, and the killing of taxi driver Amin Shaaban a short time later.

He was cornered in an apartment owned by a Milhem family relative, and was shot dead on Friday afternoon when he opened fire on the Israeli police and Shin Bet forces who had come to arrest him.