Two East Jerusalemites arrested after Tel Aviv chase

Israeli police arrested two Palestinian citizens of Israel on Thursday after a car and helicopter chase that shut down parts of Tel Aviv, according to local reports.

The two Palestinians, residents of East Jerusalem whom authorities believed were planning an attack, were reportedly arrested in Givatayim, east of Tel Aviv and then handed over to Shin Bet security officials to be interrogated, according to Haaretz.

The arrests come a day after many neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem were sealed off, one of several measures the Israeli government has said it will take in the wake of an escalation in violence in recent weeks.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told MEE that the locking down the neighbourhoods would "prevent terrorists from leaving".

Hours after Israeli security forces began sealing the neighbourhoods, two Palestinians - including one from Ras al-Amud - were shot dead in Jerusalem after two separate alleged stabbing attacks.

In the first incident, a 20-year-old identified in local media at Bassel Sadr from the West Bank city of Hebron, reportedly tried to stab an Israeli police officer at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem's Old City. Sadr was shot dead at the scene.

In the second incident, a man named in local reports as 23-year-old Ras al-Amud resident Ahmed Sha'aban, allegedly attempted to wound an elderly Israeli woman near the city's central bus station before he was shot and killed.