{"id":311251,"date":"2026-01-05T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=311251"},"modified":"2026-01-03T13:25:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T13:25:14","slug":"israel-recognizes-somaliland-to-expel-palestinians-and-control-the-red-sea-in-tandem-with-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/01\/israel-recognizes-somaliland-to-expel-palestinians-and-control-the-red-sea-in-tandem-with-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Recognizes \u201cSomaliland\u201d to Expel Palestinians and Control the Red Sea in Tandem with the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

2 Jan 2026\u00a0– Israel has declared its intent to expand into the geostrategic Red Sea Region by recognizing Northern Somalia\u2019s secessionist state, but Somalia and much of the rest of the world are pushing back hard. No other nations followed suit and only the US was supportive.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

There Is No \u201cSomaliland\u201d: Hargeisa Controls Only Half Its Former Territory<\/strong><\/p>\n

On December 26, 2025, in a move that sent shockwaves around the world, Israel announced that it was formally recognising \u201cSomaliland,\u201d a secessionist region in Northern Somalia that has been seeking independence since the collapse of Somalia\u2019s central government in 1991.<\/p>\n

However, \u201cSomaliland\u201d no longer exists within the boundaries it claims in Northern Somalia. The authorities in Hargeisa, the capital of \u201cSomaliland,\u201d control approximately 60 percent of its former territory consequent to a conflict it\u00a0lost<\/a>\u00a0in a civil war in August 2023. Roughly 30 to 40 percent is now the North Eastern State, a Federal Member State of Somalia, one of its seven Federal Member States with their own security forces and administration, and some undetermined percentage more is held by Puntland and the Warsangali sub-clan.<\/p>\n

Djibouti, a small one-city country which is north of \u201cSomaliland\u201d with a predominantly Somali population, has been startled by Hargeisa\u2019s aggressive and reckless pursuit for recognition and thus started organizing some of the communities in\u00a0Awdal\u00a0to resist.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0people of Awdal, which makes up another ten percent of \u201cSomaliland\u201d territory,\u00a0are also defying Hargeisa\u2019s authority.<\/p>\n

The World Awakens to \u201cSomaliland\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of the world had given little if any thought to \u201cSomaliland\u201d before December 26, but suddenly they saw Israel expanding into the Red Sea region bordering both West Asia and North Africa, where maritime security is crucial to the global supply chains that the world depends on. Roughly one-third of the world\u2019s trade passes through the Red Sea, and its choke points on the Suez Canal and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait make them the most contested waterways in the world.<\/p>\n

Awareness of their geostrategic significance grew in March 2021, when the massive container ship\u00a0Ever Given\u00a0got\u00a0stuck<\/a> in the Suez Canal for six days, causing huge global trade disruption, and then again in November 2023, when the Houthis began firing at ships associated with Israel in the Red Sea to support the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n

Dr. Dan Diker, President of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, stated in an X social media\u00a0discussion<\/a>\u00a0that the first component of Israel\u2019s strategic thinking was \u201csecuring the Red Sea.\u201d A base in Somaliland would be a perfect place to launch strikes against the Houthis, whose leader was quick to\u00a0warn<\/a>\u00a0that they would target any Israeli presence in \u201cSomaliland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Diker also stated that \u201cSomaliland\u201d had \u201cgenerously\u201d agreed to accept up to 1.5 million Palestinian exiles and that President Trump had been made aware of the offer. Diker is also longtime Director of the Jerusalem Center\u2019s Counter-Political Warfare Project, and former Secretary-General of the World Jewish Congress.<\/p>\n

Regional capitals and organizations scrambled\u00a0to respond. The African Union (AU), Arab League (AL), Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), East African Community (EAC), and Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) all vehemently came out against Israel\u2019s decision. The EU followed suit.<\/p>\n

Eritrea, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Djibouti, and Algeria added their own condemnation to that of their respective political blocs, as did the Palestinian Authority. Ethiopia, Kenya, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), all of which have ties to both \u201cSomaliland\u201d and Israel, chose not to respond.<\/p>\n

China, which has viewed \u201cSomaliland\u201d as equivalent to Taiwan, adamantly\u00a0reaffirmed<\/a>\u00a0its support for the territorial integrity of Somalia. The secessionist state has no hope of becoming a UN member state in the foreseeable future because China would without a doubt veto its acceptance at the UN Security Council.<\/p>\n

Turkiye, which has a large economic and military footprint in Somalia and Ethiopia, objected to Israel\u2019s entrance in the race to dominate the Red Sea. Israel recently entered an economic and military cooperation agreement with two of Turkiye\u2019s neighbors and historical nemeses, Cyprus and Greece. Some analysts surmised that Israel and Turkey are taking their competition for global influence to the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea.<\/p>\n

Israel Is a Global Pariah\u2013Somalis Passionately Support Palestinians<\/strong><\/p>\n

Markus Virgil Hoehne<\/a>, a noted German anthropologist and expert on Northern Somalia, weighed in on X to say that Israel is a pariah, now isolated on the international stage, and that no other nation has yet indicated it will follow its reckless lead and recognise \u201cSomaliland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somalia is one of the 29 UN member states that do not recognise Israel. It has officially and unequivocally stood with the Palestinian people since its independence in 1960. Many Somalis took to the streets waving both\u00a0Palestinian\u00a0and Somali flags shortly after Netanyahu and \u201cSomaliland\u201d President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi announced their new alliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomaliland\u201d itself was never an oasis of stability and mature democracy as portrayed by the secessionist movement. Although relatively stable for some years, it was never free of the troubles that plague the rest of the country, including religious extremism and the clan conflict that finally erupted into civil war and led to the loss of half its territory in 2023.Now\u00a0the Isaaq clan, which controls Hargeisa, may be rent asunder or even descend into civil war over the alliance with Israel because Somalis in \u201cSomaliland\u201d are as passionately pro-Palestinian as Somalis in the rest of Somalia. A prominent \u201cSomaliland\u201d cleric, Sheikh Mohamed Kariye was\u00a0arrested<\/a>\u00a0almost as soon as Israel made its announcement. He said: \u201cIt is an honor to be arrested for opposing\u00a0Netanyahu.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSomaliland\u201d in the US National Defense Authorization Act<\/strong><\/p>\n

On December 29, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on Israel\u2019s recognition of Somalia at Somalia\u2019s request. There the US alone stood with Israel. US Deputy Ambassador Tammy Bryce angrily and defiantly declared that \u201cIsrael has the same right as any other sovereign state to form bilateral relations,\u201d and that several Council members had, earlier this year, \u201cunilaterally recognised a non-existent Palestinian state\u201d without triggering an emergency meeting.<\/p>\n

Bryce also said that the US is not announcing any plan to recognise \u201cSomaliland,\u201d but in fact the US has\u00a0for years\u00a0maintained bilateral relations with Hargeisa, bypassing Mogadishu, most of all as a military partner. This has been a blatant but informal violation of Somalia\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a massive document that annually delineates US defense expenditures, has been gradually laying groundwork for a larger American footprint in northern Somalia, most importantly for a military base in Berbera Port, which Hargeisa controls. Berbera sits on prime coastal property, along the northern edge of the Gulf of Aden, very close to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. It\u2019s a perfect location for the US and Israel to launch strikes against the Houthis and further project power in the Red Sea.<\/p>\n

The Fiscal Year 2023 NDAA required the Department of Defense (DoD) to study the issue and controversially referred to \u201cSomaliland\u201d at least 12 times, far more than to any actual African nation. Hargeisa crowed that recognition was on the way, but it didn\u2019t come.<\/p>\n

The signed version of the 2026 NDAA requires that the expansion work for a military base in Berbera Port be implemented, but again without recognising \u201cSomaliland\u201d as a sovereign nation. It nevertheless makes way for a clear platform for US and Israeli military collaboration<\/p>\n

Why hasn\u2019t the US gone ahead and recognised \u201cSomaliland\u201d? There\u2019s a sizable lobby for it, including the Heritage Foundation and New Cold Warrior Senator Ted Cruz, who proposes that it would make way for a splendid\u00a0US\/Israel\/Taiwan\/Somaliland Pact<\/a>. In 2025, Pennsylvania House Rep. Scott Perry introduced the\u00a0Somaliland Independence Act<\/a>, which has since been referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n

However, the US doesn\u2019t need to recognise \u201cSomaliland\u201d to gain the strategic advantages it seeks. Hargeisa is already as welcoming as it could be, never standing in the way of US military expansion. The global pushback against Israel may have given the Trump Administration pause about acquiescing to the lobby, especially since it\u2019s already getting all it needs strategically.<\/p>\n

Israel had more reason to recognise. It can now claim to be expelling Palestinians in accordance with a bilateral agreement between nations it considers sovereign. It gives them something to say that can at least be argued.\u00a0Never mind that it\u2019s ethnic cleansing, which falls within the\u00a0scope<\/a>\u00a0of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the UN Genocide Convention.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Stanford University and is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a>. In 2014 she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize<\/em> for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at <\/em>ann@anngarrison.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 sovereignmedia.online<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2 Jan 2026\u00a0– Israel has declared its intent to expand into the geostrategic Red Sea Region by recognizing Northern Somalia\u2019s secessionist state, but Somalia and much of the rest of the world are pushing back hard. No other nations followed suit and only the US was supportive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":311252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[87,865,88,427,1967,70],"class_list":["post-311251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-somalia","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311255,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311251\/revisions\/311255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}