The Jerusalem Declaration

Israel Breaks the Ice and Recognizes Somaliland

Published

5 days ago

December 26, 2025

The Jerusalem Declaration: Israel’s Recognition of Somaliland Redraws the Horn of Africa.

HARGEISA/JERUSALEM — In a move that decisively alters the geopolitical geometry of the Horn of Africa, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formally announced Israel’s recognition of the Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state. The declaration, jointly signed by Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, and Somaliland President Dr. Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi (Irro), represents the first explicit extension of the Abraham Accords’ strategic logic into East Africa.

This is not a symbolic gesture. It is a calculated realignment.

Somaliland President Dr. Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi (Irro)

By recognizing Somaliland, Israel secures a stable, pro-Western partner overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb, one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints and a pressure point in the global contest over Red Sea security. For Hargeisa, the declaration functions as a sovereign seal—transforming decades of de facto statehood into formal international legitimacy backed by a major military and intelligence power.

The architecture of the agreement reveals its depth. Security and intelligence cooperation sit at its core, with explicit references to Israel’s counterterrorism apparatus signaling that this partnership is anchored in maritime surveillance, regional threat containment, and intelligence sharing. This is sovereignty validated through utility, not sympathy.

Equally consequential is the framing. By placing the recognition under the spirit of the Abraham Accords, Jerusalem has sent a clear signal to Washington: Somaliland now belongs within the pro-Western, anti-extremist alignment that the United States has spent years consolidating across the Middle East. The implication is unmistakable—Somaliland is no longer an unresolved African anomaly but a strategic asset within a wider US-aligned security ecosystem.

The economic dimension reinforces this shift. Immediate cooperation in agriculture, technology, and health opens a pathway for Somaliland to bypass traditional development bottlenecks through Israeli innovation. It is a model of leapfrog diplomacy—pairing political recognition with tangible state-building capacity.

In Mogadishu, the reaction has been conspicuous by its absence. Israel’s recognition effectively collapses the long-asserted “veto power” of the Somali Federal Government over Somaliland’s external relations. The “One Somalia” policy, already strained, now faces its most serious rupture. When a technologically advanced military power with deep ties to Washington formalizes relations with Hargeisa, the fiction of exclusive sovereignty becomes untenable.

For the global order, the implications extend beyond the Horn. This is the Icebreaker Strategy materialized. Israel’s move absorbs the initial diplomatic shock, lowering the cost for other states—particularly in Europe and the Commonwealth—to follow. Recognition, once treated as a high-risk deviation from African Union orthodoxy, is rapidly becoming the path of least resistance.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

If Berbera Port has served as Somaliland’s economic engine, the Jerusalem Declaration is its political ignition. President Irro’s invitation to Jerusalem marks the beginning of a new diplomatic chapter—one defined not by appeals for validation, but by negotiated power.

Somaliland is no longer the “best-kept secret in Africa.” With Israel’s recognition, it has crossed the threshold from endurance to acceptance. The question facing the international community is no longer whether Somaliland exists as a state, but how quickly others will adapt to a reality that has now been formally declared.