Khalil Adel Khalil, 25, was arrested March 1 for traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State terror group. Photo: EPA.

JNS.org – Israel’s Shin Bet security agency announced Monday that it recently arrested an Israeli Arab man from Jerusalem for traveling to Syria to join the Islamic State terror group.

Khalil Adel Khalil, 25, was arrested March 1 after admitting to interrogators that he, along with an associate, Sami a-Aziz Abu Sneina, began planning to join Islamic State last August after watching recruitment videos online.

After training in a gym on Hebrew University’s Mt. Scopus campus and telling his family that he was leaving to make the Hajj Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Khalil and his friend left for Greece and then Turkey in January, and eventually arrived at an Islamic State safe house on the Turkish-Syrian border. There with other Islamic State recruits from around the world, the two were smuggled into Syria. Khalil returned several weeks later to Israel, where he was arrested.

The Shin Bet noted that the latest arrest was part of a growing trend of Israeli Arabs interested in joining Islamic State. About 40 Palestinians and Israeli Arabs have gone to Syria to fight with terror groups there amid the country’s civil war.