Israel recognizes Somaliland: the diplomacy of accomplished facts and the engineering of peripheries

Ayman El Hakim, 28/12/2025

The official recognition of Somaliland by Israel, announced on Friday, December 26, 2025, is not merely a diplomatic realignment. It is part of a broader regional strategy, where state recognition becomes an instrument of security projection and, potentially, a lever for demographic engineering.

For the first time, a core state in the international system recognizes an entity resulting from unilateral secession, outside any multilateral framework. By breaking with the consensus on Somalia's territorial integrity, Israel is not merely supporting a marginalized actor: it is opening a new space for politico-military intervention in a region that has become central to the direct and indirect confrontation with Iran and the Houthis in Yemen.

The choice of Somaliland is strategic. Located on the Gulf of Aden, near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the territory overlooks one of the world's most sensitive maritime routes. For months, this area has been at the heart of Houthi attacks against international shipping, carried out with Iran's political and military support. By recognizing Somaliland, Israel gains a forward base for intelligence, maritime surveillance, and securing its trade routes, in coordination with its regional partners.

But this recognition could serve another purpose. Several analysts are now raising the hypothesis of an Israeli project aimed at encouraging the emigration of Palestinians from Gaza to peripheral territories, among which Somaliland would be a possible option. This is not, at this stage, an officially declared plan, but a hypothesis fueled by repeated Israeli political statements about a “migration solution” for Gaza and the active search for third countries willing to receive “voluntarily deported” populations.

The recognition of Somaliland would provide a diplomatic and legal framework for this type of project. A poor, isolated territory, in search of recognition and investment, could be presented as a “humanitarian solution,” while in reality, it would constitute an outsourcing of the Palestinian problem, in line with an old logic of displacement rather than political resolution.

If this hypothesis were to materialize, it would raise major questions. It would transform the recognition of Somaliland into a tool for demographic reconfiguration, not merely a security one. Above all, it would reinforce accusations of double standards: while Palestinian self-determination continues to be denied on their own land, a solution based on yet another exile would be promoted under the guise of pragmatism.

The regional consequences would be significant. For Somalia and the African Union, this recognition already sets a dangerous precedent, weakening the principle of borders inherited from colonization. For Somaliland itself, it carries a major risk: becoming both a military outpost in the confrontation with Iran and Yemen and a receptacle for displaced populations, instrumentalized by external powers.

By recognizing Somaliland, Israel is not merely expanding its diplomatic network. It is experimenting with a form of diplomacy of accomplished facts, where recognition serves to redraw the security and human maps of the regional conflict.

In this recomposing world, being recognized no longer means being sovereign. It means being useful—militarily, politically, or demographically.