Recognition That Does Not Stop at the Borders of Somalia...

The announcement by Benjamin Netanyahu's government recognizing Somaliland is a continuation of a well-known Israeli trend aimed at investing in internal conflicts in countries and seizing such opportunities to entrench an Israeli security doctrine, which involves weakening and fragmenting states in the region, keeping them mired in their problems, bolstering them where they exist, and attempting to create them where they do not. This means a disregard for the principle of the unity and sovereignty of states.

The region of Somaliland is located in northern Somalia, with an area estimated at around 176,000 square kilometers, inhabited by between four and four and a half million people. It overlooks the Gulf of Aden to the north, one of the most dangerous and important international shipping routes leading to the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb.

The weakness of the Somali central state in the early 1990s prompted local clan leaders to unilaterally declare secession in May 1991 in the region that had been mandated by Britain until 1961.
Since 1991, the region has been managed as a de facto state, with its own government, parliament, currency, and security forces, but has remained outside of international recognition, as it is not recognized by the United Nations or the African Union, and has yet to achieve full legal recognition from any country in the world.

Israeli recognition signifies a break from a long-standing norm in the Arab, African, and international systems, which was about preserving the unity of states inherited from the post-colonial period.

In other words, Israel seeks to establish a precedent that says "the status quo" can transform into international legitimacy whenever it receives the appropriate political backing and external support. From Somalia to elsewhere, Netanyahu dreams of changing agreed-upon international rules and destabilizing them, thus making so-called international legitimacy disappear. This diverts attention from Gaza, settlement activities in the West Bank, and the International Criminal Court.

This is a long-standing Israeli policy that relies on supporting separatist tendencies in the region’s countries to weaken central states that may pose competition or hostility, while supporting internal distractions in these countries and creating opportunities for foreign intervention, which Israel excels at, to serve as a gateway for pressures and extortion. This is what it does in southern Syria, to weaken the central authority in Syria and keep it in a state of conflict and failure after the devastation caused by war. It is well-known that Israel had a hand previously in Iraqi Kurdistan to weaken the central Iraqi state, in Lebanon by supporting separatist forces, and in Palestine by trying to isolate the West Bank from the Gaza Strip.

Domestically, it deals with Arabs as religious sects, refusing to recognize them as a Palestinian Arab national minority, encouraging and fueling any direction that contributes to the fragmentation of this minority.

The Somaliland region, overlooking the Gulf of Aden, is directly adjacent to global trade and energy corridors, close to the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb. Any Israeli presence in this space, even if it starts in the form of diplomacy or security cooperation, opens the door for long-term strategic positioning that exerts pressure on Arab national security, especially Egypt, and places it before new equations that affect international navigation security and the Suez Canal.

In this context, it cannot be ruled out that this recognition could shift from a political step to a gateway for security and military cooperation, and military training and cooperation may already be in existence.

Diplomatic recognition does not stop at cooperation in training or light arms; here, one cannot overlook the role of the United Arab Emirates due to its economic and logistical presence in Somaliland on the Red Sea and its close relationship with Israel.

This pathway allows Israel an indirect foothold near Bab el-Mandeb, without the need for declared military bases, which explains the Egyptian and Arab concern that recognizing Somaliland could become part of redrawing spheres of influence in the Red Sea under the banners of cooperation and maritime security, rather than under the banner of explicit military expansion.

From this standpoint, the Egyptian response was understandably anxious, as Egypt views the Red Sea as a direct extension of its national security, not just a shipping lane. Egypt, despite its complicit position in the Gaza War for two years of genocide, realizes that opening the door to changing the rules of the game in the Horn of Africa today will place it, along with the Arab world, before more complex realities tomorrow, not only at Bab el-Mandeb but in all potential disintegration arenas from Sudan to Syria, and from Libya to Palestine.

Netanyahu's recognition of Somaliland is a link in a broader trajectory aimed at redefining what a state is in the region, transforming disintegration from a rejected exceptional state into legitimate political reality. Netanyahu behaves like a regional leader without competition, now seeing the whole region as a field for implementing his projects, linking them all to the realization of the dream of a Greater Jewish State and punishing anyone who raises their head.