Metropolitan Tel Aviv was brought to a standstill Tuesday morning due an alert of an imminent terrorist attack. Police arrested three Palestinian Authority Arabs and the city is returning to normal following a downgrade of the threat. However, terrorists in Gaza have turned their weapons on southern Israel residents again, firing two more Kassam rockets.
Police called off the alert after nabbing three unarmed Arabs near the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station.
The alert in Tel Aviv brought the city to its knees, snarling traffic as police and volunteers at several entrances checked every vehicle and helicopters hovered overhead. Rush-hour traffic was reduced to a turtle-like crawl on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Highway Number 1, as well as the north-south routes in and out of the city.
The alert, the highest possible, was the first issued in the city for a long time and came after a recent threat by Islamic Jihad terrorists to carry out a suicide bombing in the area.
Shortly after the alert was called off, Gaza terrorists fired two Kassam rockets, one of them landing near the Kerem Shalom crossing. No one was injured in the explosions and no damage was reported.
Earlier Tuesday morning, soldiers shot and killed a wanted terrorist in Shechem after he tried to flee. The IDF has been operating almost nightly in the past few days to clean up one of the terrorist capitals of Israel.
The United States has been showing off Shechem as an example of the Palestinian Authority's ability to establish law and order through the deployment of American-trained armed special forces, which the U.S. and PA call policemen. However, they do not work in the middle of the night and generally tackle criminals and traffic offenders, leaving to the IDF the task of tracking down terrorists.