Israeli Arab gets 18 months for trying to join Islamic State

The Lod District Court on Tuesday sentenced an Israeli Arab man to 18 months in prison for trying to join Islamic State group in Syria.

Hamis Salameh, 21, from the adjacent of Ramle, outside Tel Aviv, was convicted on a plea bargain of illegally exiting the country and contacting a foreign agent.

Salameh was indicted by the same court on August 13 last year following his arrest a month earlier. He was scooped up when he landed in Ben Gurion Airport after Turkish authorities extradited him to Israel, the Shin Bet security service said at the time.

An engineering student at Kinneret College, Salameh admitted to Shin Bet investigators that he had begun planning to join Islamic State after watching recruitment and propaganda videos online. He made contact on Twitter with a militant who convinced him to join the ranks of the radical group.

According to a Shin Bet statement, Salameh was arrested by Turkish police in the border town of Adana hours before he was set to cross the border into Syria.

Over the past several years, the number of Palestinian and Israeli Arab volunteer recruits has increased among Syrian rebel groups, and the Shin Bet believes that more than 40 Israeli Arabs have joined the Islamic State in the last two years.

In April an Israeli Arab man was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of traveling to Syria to join the al-Nusra Front and fight against President Bashar Assad’s regime.

The Haifa District Court sentencing of Amin Snobar, 24, from Kafr Yasif in the northern Galilee, was the most severe so far given to an Israeli citizen involved in the Syrian civil war.

In July 2015 five Israeli Arabs, including two teachers, were indicted for supporting the Islamic State group and promoting jihadist ideology in their classes.