Afrasianet - Laila Nicolas - The current Israeli strategy is no longer limited to dealing with existing states, but has moved to the stage of "state engineering" in line with its security interests, where "Somaliland" is intended to be the first laboratory.
The UN Security Council held a meeting on Israel's recognition of Somaliland as an independent state, and listened to a briefing by a UN official in which he noted that the Council has repeatedly affirmed respect for Somalia's sovereignty, territorial integrity, political independence and unity.
It was striking what Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said about double standards and hypocrisy (according to him), considering that the United Nations condones unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, while holding an emergency session when Israel exercises what he describes as its sovereign powers by recognizing the land of Somaliland.
Because of the importance of the issue of recognition of Somaliland, we refute it from a legal point of view as follows:
First: Comparison between the question of Palestine and Somaliland
Israel's claim of double standards is an attempt to selectively employ the concepts of international law. The well-established legal fact is that the Palestinian question falls under the category of "decolonization and the end of foreign occupation", while the issue of Somaliland falls under the category of "separation within one State". Accordingly, the Security Council does not impose double standards, but applies two very different legal frameworks to two non-identical situations.
According to multiple Security Council resolutions and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, the Palestinian territories are classified as "occupied territories" under the control of a foreign power (Israel). The relationship here is one between an "occupied people" and an "occupying power." International law grants the occupied peoples an inherent right to self-determination and independence to build their own state. Therefore, Palestine is not "separated" from Israel, because it has never been a legal part of it; it seeks to be free from it.
In the case of Somaliland, in the eyes of international law and the African Union, it is an integral part of the Federal Republic of Somalia, a sovereign state and a member of the United Nations. The relationship here is one between a "territory" and a "central government."
International law is strongly inclined to preserve the "territorial integrity" of existing states and opposes unilateral secession except in very rare cases.
On this basis, international law does not view Palestinians as separatists, but as an occupied people seeking independence. Somaliland is a separatist movement that seeks to divide a sovereign state. Conflation of "resistance to occupation" and "political separation" is a legal misinformation aimed at diluting the Palestinian cause and justifying the balkanization of the Arab and African region.
In the same context, Palestine enjoys the status of a "non-member observer state" in the United Nations recognized by the General Assembly, which means that the establishment of a Palestinian state is a matter of time and procedures, while "Somaliland" has no international legal status.
Second: The legality of the confession itself
The greatest danger of Israel's recognition of "Somaliland" lies in its violation of one of the most important constants of public international law and African stability, the principle of "the sanctity of borders inherited from colonialism" (Uti Possidetis Juris). This principle states that the borders drawn by the colonizer, although indiscriminate, become fixed international borders at the moment of independence.
In 1964, the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union) endorsed this principle in the Cairo Declaration, with the aim of avoiding endless wars due to ethnic and tribal overlap on the continent, especially after the wave of decolonization. This was confirmed by the International Court of Justice in Burkina Faso v. Mali, Libya v. Chad and others.
Israel's unilateral recognition of a separatist entity within a sovereign state (Federal Somalia) without the consent of the mother state constitutes a flagrant violation of the African Union Charter and international law. This act strips the legal cover of the central state and gives it to separatist entities, thus establishing a legal chaos that allows any region with the elements of self-power to claim full sovereignty.
Third: Implications of recognition
International powers typically treat stable separatist entities (such as Somaliland, Iraqi Kurdistan, or Taiwan) as "fait accompli," avoiding "legal recognition," i.e., turning these entities into full-fledged member states with the right to form military alliances, host foreign bases, and purchase weapons that affect the security and stability of the mother state and the region.
Israel's goal in recognition is to transform the concept of the nation-state in the Middle East from a sacred unity to a negotiable and fragmentable entity based on external interests, and this will later apply to other Arab countries with similar crises. Israel's recognition of Somaliland is aimed at destroying the legal structure that has maintained a minimum of cohesion of the region's states. The danger of the "Somali model" is that it is a "legal precedent" that separatists in Yemen and Syria will later rely on to demand the same treatment.
This approach confirms that the current Israeli strategy is no longer limited to dealing with existing countries, but has moved to the stage of "engineering states" in line with its security interests, where "Somaliland" is intended to be the first laboratory, and Yemen may be the next strategic target, followed by Syria and the rosary, in a comprehensive reshaping process of the map of the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.
