On Dec. 26, the politically and diplomatically beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Gideon Saar announced that they recognized the Somaliland region as an independent state. Israel’s recognition of the Somaliland administration in Hargeisa has been characterized as a breakthrough in the self-declared republic’s three-decade quest for international legitimacy. Yet when subjected to analysis, this recognition is revealed to be considerably less consequential. The recognition reveals more about Netanyahu’s precarious political position, his deteriorating international standing and broader regional geopolitical rivalries than it does about Somaliland. This so-called recognition appears politically opportunistic, legally problematic and strategically destabilizing for the Horn of Africa region.
Netanyahu currently governs from a position of political weakness both domestically and internationally. Within Israel, his administration presides over a deeply fractured society experiencing profound polarization, sustained by war fatigue, constitutional controversies surrounding judicial reforms and prolonged governmental instability. Substantial segments of Israeli civil society perceive his continued tenure as motivated primarily by personal legal survival rather than coherent national strategic interests. On the international stage, Netanyahu has become an increasingly isolated figure, associated with unprecedented civilian casualties in Gaza and facing mounting legal scrutiny from international judicial bodies alongside widespread condemnation from human rights organizations.
Within this context of Netanyahu’s own diminishing legitimacy, the recognition of Somaliland functions less as a substantive foreign policy initiative and more as a symbolic deflection from more pressing crises. It represents a relatively low-cost diplomatic maneuver designed to project continued relevance and statecraft capacity at a historical moment when Netanyahu’s diplomatic standing has deteriorated significantly across much of the Global South and within multilateral institutions. Somaliland, having remained un-recognized within international diplomatic frameworks for over three decades, becomes an expedient platform upon which Netanyahu can perform the aesthetics of diplomatic innovation without fundamentally addressing Israel’s deepening international isolation or the structural factors driving its diplomatic crisis.
More ethically troubling are the ways in which Somaliland’s recognition has become entangled, with proposals regarding the potential relocation of Palestinian populations from Gaza. While such demographic transfer schemes remain officially ambiguous and have not been formally acknowledged by Israeli authorities, their persistent circulation within policy discussions and media discourse is itself politically significant. The notion that Palestinian populations could be transferred en masse to geographically distant territories like Somaliland revives the logic of forced displacement that characterized the original Nakba of 1948, repositioning it not as a historical trauma but as an ongoing political project.
Recent documented instances of Palestinian individuals being relocated to distant locations, including South Africa, demonstrate how forced displacement is being discursively repackaged as "voluntary migration" or "humanitarian resettlement." Such schemes constitute forms of demographic erasure that separate people from their ancestral territories and erase historical claims to land. The association of Somaliland’s recognition with these proposals positions the self-declared republic within an ethically compromised framework, transforming it from an entity seeking legitimate sovereign recognition into a potential site for externalizing unresolved injustices of Palestinians.
Recognition achieved under these conditions represents not genuine empowerment or sovereign validation but rather strategic instrumentalization serving external political agendas disconnected from Somaliland’s own self-determination claims.
This recognition also confronts contradictions inherent in Somaliland’s territorial claims and governance capacity. Sovereignty is not merely asserted through declaration but must be demonstrated through effective territorial control, institutional legitimacy and popular consent. Somaliland’s territorial claims remain profoundly contested, particularly across the eastern regions of Sool, Sanaag and Cayn, where the SSC-Khatumo administration has emerged as a rival political authority explicitly aligned with Somalia’s federal government and rejecting Hargeisa’s.
The conflict over these territories is not peripheral to Somaliland’s "sovereignty project" but challenges its foundational logic. Substantial populations within these disputed regions actively contest Hargeisa’s authority through political mobilization, armed resistance and alignment with Mogadishu. Similarly, increasing political mobilization within the Awdal region reflects longstanding grievances concerning political marginalization, inequitable clan-based power distribution and exclusionary governance practices within Somaliland’s own institutional structures.
Netanyahu’s recognition fails to acknowledge or address these internal fractures and territorial contestations. Such recognition risks entrenching existing conflicts rather than facilitating their resolution, thereby undermining the fundamental prerequisites upon which any legitimate state must rest: meaningful popular consent, inclusive political representation, and coherent territorial integrity that reflects demographic and political realities rather than aspirational cartographies.
Netanyahu’s recognition of Somaliland cannot be separated from broader geopolitical calculations, particularly the intensifying strategic rivalry between Israel and Türkiye across the Eastern Mediterranean and adjacent regions. His recent diplomatic initiatives, strengthening ties with Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration in Cyprus, indicate a clear strategic orientation toward containing Turkish regional influence and constructing counterbalancing alliances. The Horn of Africa, positioned along critical maritime routes connecting the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Indian Ocean, constitutes an extension of this geopolitical competition.
Türkiye has emerged as a primary actor in Somalia’s reconstruction efforts, investing substantially in state institutional capacity building, security sector development and humanitarian infrastructure while consistently supporting Somalia’s territorial integrity and federal constitutional framework. Within this context, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland represents not a neutral diplomatic gesture but rather a deliberate challenge to Ankara’s regional positioning and influence.
Understood within this geopolitical framework, Somaliland’s recognition functions less as an autonomous decision concerning the territory’s legitimate sovereign aspirations and more as instrumental signaling within a broader contest for regional influence between external powers. This instrumentalization of a fragile region as leverage within great power competition generates additional instability throughout the Horn of Africa rather than contributing meaningfully to regional peace, development or conflict resolution.
Netanyahu’s recognition of Somaliland, while generating significant media attention and diplomatic commentary, ultimately represents a hollow gesture lacking a substantive diplomatic, legal or strategic foundation. It does not resolve the fundamental contradictions undermining Somaliland’s sovereignty claims, including contested territorial control and internal political fragmentation. It risks entangling Somaliland in ethically indefensible demographic engineering schemes targeting Palestinian populations. Most significantly, it functions primarily as a geopolitical provocation directed at Türkiye rather than as a genuine engagement with Somaliland.
The recognition reflects what might be termed the politics of desperation, where symbolic diplomatic performances substitute for meaningful policy initiatives addressing underlying structural challenges. For Somaliland, authentic international legitimacy cannot be achieved through association with an internationally isolated leader whose own domestic and international standing continues to erode. For Palestinian populations, justice and self-determination cannot be realized through forced exile and demographic transfer schemes. For the Horn of Africa region more broadly, sustainable peace and stability will not emerge from diplomatic maneuvers designed to inflame existing geopolitical rivalries rather than address their root causes through inclusive dialogue and conflict resolution mechanisms.
