Israeli police have arrested a minister in the Hamas-led Palestinian government, the first time Israel has arrested a minister since the new cabinet was sworn in last week.

Hamas officials said Khaled Abu Arafa, minister of Jerusalem affairs, was detained along with his bodyguard on Thursday morning.

At the time he was travelling to Izzariya, a suburb near Jerusalem, where he was planning to open an office.

Israeli jeeps with paramilitary policemen inside appeared to have been waiting for him, the officials said.

Walid al-Umari, Aljazeera reporter in Ram Allah, quoted one of Afara's bodyguards as saying that the Palestinian minister was intercepted at an Israeli checkpoint and was taken to an Israeli army office in Jerusalem.

Israel's police did not immediately comment.

It appears Abu Arafa was arrested for trying to open the office. Part of Izzariya is in Jerusalem, which is at the centre of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel claims the entire city as its capital, while the Palestinians claim the eastern half for the capital of a future state.

Abu Arafa, a Jerusalem resident born in 1961, has been detained several times by Israel in the past.

PHOTO CAPTION

Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Nablus. (AFP)