Somalia’s month-long presidency of the UN Security Council, its first in 54 years, has arrived with an unexpected geopolitical twist: a fight to contain the fallout from Israel’s recognition of Somaliland and the wider regional implications it carries from the Horn of Africa to the Red Sea and Gaza.
In its opening days, the council convened an emergency session on Venezuela. But Mogadishu has made clear it intends to use the gavel to rally opposition to Israel’s move and to defend Somalia’s internationally recognized borders. The African Union and Somalia swiftly condemned the recognition, warning it risks destabilizing an already fragile Horn of Africa—where political turmoil, terrorism and climate shocks regularly collide—while Somaliland celebrated the leap in its long-running bid for statehood.
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At the center of the new tension is a question that reaches far beyond Hargeisa: why would Israel, isolated diplomatically and bogged down in a grinding conflict in Gaza, pour political capital into recognizing a breakaway region that the AU and most of the world still consider part of Somalia?
The immediate optics were clear. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar landed in Somaliland and met the region’s leadership, the first high-level visit since recognition was announced. Jerusalem framed the step as an extension of the Abraham Accords—a bid to keep alive a framework that once promised economic and security normalization with Arab states by sidestepping the Palestinian question and isolating Iran.
Analysts see a domestic and regional calculus layered beneath the headline. Somalia’s ambassador to the UN, Abukar Dahir Osman, said the issue was “deliberately injected into the international arena to divert attention” from Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the West Bank. Yossi Mekelberg, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, echoed that view, arguing the move helps deflect from Israel’s failure to meet its declared objectives against Hamas and from polarizing judicial reforms at home. With polls suggesting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition faces a difficult path back to public confidence, the optics of forging new partnerships matter.
Gideon Levy, a veteran columnist for Haaretz, places the gambit within the post–Oct. 7 unraveling of Israel’s normalization drive. The Abraham Accords were always designed, he argues, to bypass Palestinians and maximize trade and security cooperation with regional heavyweights. That logic faltered once the war began. Netanyahu’s attempt to link Somaliland’s recognition to the Accords reads to some in Jerusalem as a last-ditch effort to revive a faltering strategy.
There is also a harder-edged security dimension. Israel faces a Red Sea choke point challenge that has gutted traffic through its southern gateway at Eilat. Houthi forces in Yemen have launched missiles and drones in what they call solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, while threatening or blocking shipping linked to Israel. Israeli air defenses have not been able to intercept every projectile. Activity at Eilat Port has plunged by more than 90 percent, according to local officials. While U.S.-led strikes have targeted Houthi capabilities, arrangements to reduce attacks on international shipping have reportedly excluded Israeli-flagged vessels—an uncomfortable reminder, critics say, of the limits of Washington’s readiness to absorb Israel’s strategic costs, and a signal of the “America First” instincts associated with Donald Trump that still influence U.S. policy debates.
Against that backdrop, Somaliland’s geography matters. Perched along the Gulf of Aden near the Bab el-Mandeb, the region sits astride one of the world’s tightest maritime choke points. Mekelberg suggests ties with Hargeisa could ease Israeli access—intelligence or otherwise—toward the Houthis in Yemen and potentially toward Iran, Israel’s chief regional adversary. With foreign military bases dotted across nearby Djibouti and Eritrea, Israel may see Somaliland as a way to expand options as the region’s security architecture shifts.
But the risks are profound. Somalia insists that recognition of Somaliland violates international norms and the AU’s bedrock principle of preserving postcolonial borders. Mogadishu fears the move could embolden separatists across the region and inject the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into Horn of Africa politics, inviting proxy dynamics in a theater already saturated with competing Gulf and regional interests. From the Security Council, Somali officials are expected to press for statements reinforcing territorial integrity and discouraging unilateral steps that complicate AU and UN mediation.
For Hargeisa, the gains are straightforward: recognition places Somaliland’s independence case on the global agenda, with the promise of expanded trade, financing and security cooperation. For Israel, the advantages are less certain. Levy argues Israel is running out of diplomatic runway and can no longer be choosy about partners, increasingly aligning with far-right actors globally. The absence of follow-on recognitions from the United States or key allies underscores Israel’s diminished standing, he says.
Meanwhile, the Gaza war remains the inescapable fulcrum. Even before current fighting, Mekelberg notes, the “elephant in the room” was the Palestinians. Today, despite periodic cease-fire announcements, Palestinian health officials report sustained casualties and a spiraling humanitarian crisis. Israeli leaders have not outlined a durable postwar plan for Gaza, and Netanyahu’s coalition continues to prioritize preventing the emergence of a Palestinian state. Reports that Israel floated relocating large numbers of Gazans to Somaliland—firmly rejected by Somaliland’s leaders—reinforced to critics the sense of policy improvisation and a lack of a viable political horizon.
The broader regional pattern is familiar: Israeli strikes and covert actions across the Middle East—particularly in Syria and Lebanon, and at times reaching Iranian assets—aim to degrade adversaries but also tend to widen the conflict’s aperture. As both Mekelberg and Levy argue, exporting the confrontation can shift attention from Gaza, but it also risks hardening opposition and producing blowback in arenas Israel cannot fully control. The Horn of Africa, with its fragile states and high-stakes waterways, is one of those arenas.
What happens next will turn on several tests. First, whether Somalia can parlay its Security Council presidency into a broader diplomatic coalition reaffirming its territorial integrity and cautioning against unilateral recognitions. Second, whether any governments follow Israel in recognizing Somaliland; for now, none have. Third, whether Israel can extract tangible security benefits—maritime, intelligence or otherwise—from its new relationship without triggering wider instability. And finally, whether the war’s course in Gaza and the political climate in Israel alter Jerusalem’s calculations.
Hope persists on one front. However complicated by the current violence, Mekelberg contends a negotiated two-state outcome remains less damaging than any alternative—a view echoed by many in the international community. For Somalia, preserving borders and stability in the Horn is the priority. For Israel, securing regional leverage while avoiding strategic overreach is the challenge. In Somaliland, the two trajectories intersect, and the Security Council gavel—for now in Mogadishu’s hands—has suddenly become a tool to shape how that intersection unfolds.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
