Somalia condemned the trip as an ‘unauthorised incursion’, but the Israeli foreign minister insisted the move was ‘not directed against anyone’
January 7, 2026 13:48
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar this week completed the first-ever official diplomatic visit to Somaliland after Jerusalem became the first UN member to recognise the breakaway nation’s sovereignty last month.
Sa’ar made a trip to the capital, Hargeisa, for meetings with President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi.
Writing on X about his visit, he said: “It's a great privilege to conduct the first official diplomatic visit to Somaliland.
"The visit is also a message: We are determined to vigorously advance relations between Israel and Somaliland.”
"The President of Somaliland informed me that he has accepted Prime Minister Netanyahu’s invitation and will pay an official visit to Israel,” he added.
Somaliland was first established in 1960 after the Somaliland Protectorate was granted independence from the British Empire.
Since then, it has been largely controlled by the Isaaq clan, who claim the legacy of the pre-protectorate Isaaq Sultanate, which covered parts of modern Somalia and Ethiopia in the 18th Century.
However, shortly after independence, Somaliland entered into a voluntary union with the neighbouring Italian Somaliland to form the Somali Republic.
Since then, and through the creation of modern Somalia in 2012, the region has been fraught with regime change, inter-ethnic violence and invasion, including a US-backed Ethiopian occupation between 2006 and 2012 and a civil war against Al Shabaab, an Al Qaeda-linked Islamist terror group.
The attempted genocide of the Isaaq under Somalia’s Mohammed Siad Barre, the dictatorial leader of a socialist military junta in Somalia, in the late 1980s, which saw an estimated 100,000 Isaaq civilians massacred, has been a key source of hostility between the two states and is central to Isaaq-dominated Somaliland’s push to break away.
Somaliland unilaterally declared independence from what is now Somalia in 1991 as Barre’s Somali Democratic Republic collapsed.
Following Sa’ar’s announcement, the Somali Foreign Ministry condemned the visit “in the strongest possible terms”, labelling it an “unauthorised incursion” into its territory.
A spokesperson for the ministry added: “Without explicit consent and authorisation of the Federal Government of Somalia, [this visit] is illegal, null and void.”
However, the Israeli minister appeared to hit back at Mogadishu’s protests in his statement, saying: “The mutual recognition and establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries are not directed against anyone. Our shared objective is to promote the mutual benefit of both nations and countries.
“In Hargeisa, I made it clear: Only Israel will decide whom it recognises and with whom it maintains diplomatic relations.”
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