When Israel announced the day after Christmas that it would formally recognize Somaliland, making it the first country in the world to announce formal diplomatic relations with the secessionist region in the Horn of Africa, even some of Washington’s foremost foreign policy experts were sheepishly asking the same question: What, exactly, is Somaliland? 

There was no single event that led to Israel’s choice to recognize the sovereignty of Somaliland, which announced its independence from Somalia in 1991. The territory has functioned independently for 35 years; nothing in its governance changed last year. 

What changed was Israel — and its geopolitical calculus regarding regional security threats. 

“The Houthis didn’t used to fire missiles at Israel. That’s new, and Israel’s now trying to respond to a new situation,” said David Makovsky, the Ziegler Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I have no doubt that this was driven by how to try to neutralize a threat from the Houthis that Israel takes very seriously.” 

Somaliland sits just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, from which the Iran-backed Houthis have fired drones and ballistic missiles at Israel following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in 2023. Allying with Somaliland could allow Israel to target the Yemeni militia from much closer range. Israel has also reportedly approached Somaliland about resettling Palestinians from Gaza there, although officials in the country have denied that such conversations took place. 

Somaliland also sits in a strategic location south of Djibouti and to the east of Ethiopia, and its coastland is close to where the Indian Ocean and Red Sea meet, making it a prime shipping location. 

“No one can ignore the strategic location of Somaliland,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told The Wall Street Journal. “The straits are a strategic point.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar visited Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital, on Tuesday to meet with President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi. It was the first visit by a foreign minister to Somaliland in its more than three decades of existence as a self-governing entity. 

The key question is whether Jerusalem’s recognition of Somaliland will prompt similar moves by other nations. Somalia, with which Israel does not have diplomatic nations, has slammed the move. The African Union on Tuesday called for Israel to walk back its recognition, saying the move “represents an unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign Member State of the United Nations.” 

But even as Israel faces diplomatic pushback even from allied African nations, it has created an opening for Somaliland to press its case internationally. 

The region was a separate entity from Somalia beginning in the 19th century, when it was controlled by the British — in contrast to present-day Somalia, which was previously ruled by Italy. Today Somaliland is home to 6 million people, and it has held democratic elections throughout the past two decades. 

Washington has not recognized Somaliland, and a State Department spokesperson told Jewish Insider on Tuesday that no such announcement is forthcoming. 

“The United States continues to recognize the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Somalia, which includes the territory of Somaliland,” the spokesperson said. 

But at an emergency United Nations Security Council hearing last week, Tammy Bruce, the U.S. deputy representative to the U.N., defended Israel’s right to conduct diplomacy, and she called out the body’s “persistent double standards” in treating the recognition of Somaliland as different from states that have unilaterally recognized a Palestinian state.

“The Americans are engaging with the country. How quickly they move to recognize Somaliland, I don’t know,” said Max Webb, a Horn of Africa expert who works at Israel Policy Forum. “Somaliland has been a fixture of Republican politics.” 

“Israel has the same right to conduct diplomatic relations as any other sovereign state,” said Bruce. “Earlier this year, several countries including members of this council made the unilateral decision to recognize a non-existent Palestinian state, and yet no emergency meeting was called to express this council’s outrage.” 

Even though Washington does not recognize Somaliland, the region has a small diplomatic mission in the United States. In December, the top U.S. military official overseeing the Africa Command visited Somaliland and met with Abdullahi, its president.

“The Americans are engaging with the country. How quickly they move to recognize Somaliland, I don’t know,” said Max Webb, a Horn of Africa expert who works at Israel Policy Forum. “Somaliland has been a fixture of Republican politics.” 

The conservative Heritage Foundation first called for U.S. recognition of Somaliland in 2021. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) threw his support behind recognition last August, and he said in a post on X on Monday that Somaliland recognition “aligns with America’s security interests.” President Donald Trump told The New York Post in December that he wasn’t yet ready to recognize Somaliland but that he will “study” the issue. “Does anyone know what Somaliland is, really?” Trump said.

Taiwan, which is not a United Nations member state, has a representative office in Somaliland, but it has not formally recognized Somaliland as an independent state. A handful of regional powerhouses, including Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates, also have strong economic relationships with Somaliland. They have yet to establish full diplomatic ties, although Somaliland and Ethiopia — the second most populous nation in Africa — signed a major memorandum of understanding in 2024. There are larger geopolitical factors at play: Egypt is closely aligned with Somalia, while Egypt and Ethiopia have long been at odds over an Ethiopian hydroelectric project on the Nile River. Turkey and Qatar, both of which are close to Mogadishu, condemned Israel’s actions.

Somalia is a key counterterrorism partner for the U.S., particularly as the Islamist group al-Shabab has grown and become more deadly alongside a Somali affiliate of ISIS. Some worry that U.S. recognition of Somaliland could hamper that coordination. 

“Somaliland is on the map,” said Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “People who had never heard of Somaliland a week ago are suddenly reading up on its history and understanding its arguments.”

“I’m sure there are other countries as well beyond the U.S. that worry if they recognize Somaliland, then Somalia will have a full meltdown and will cut off counterterrorism cooperation, for instance, and then al-Shabab will make even further gains,” said Joshua Meservey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who has called for U.S. recognition of Somaliland. “Somalia’s dysfunction almost protects it, in a way, from Somaliland gaining wider recognition.” 

Over the past 10 days, no other states have followed Israel’s lead. But a diplomatic crisis has not emerged, at least not yet — and now, Somaliland is part of the global conversation in a serious way for the first time since it declared independence.

“Somaliland is on the map,” said Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “People who had never heard of Somaliland a week ago are suddenly reading up on its history and understanding its arguments.”

Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and expert witnesses on Wednesday debated the meaning and significance of President Donald Trump’s edict in September that he “will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” which came amid a reported effort earlier this year by the Israeli government to assert sovereignty over all or part of the territory.

The at-times contentious hearing focused on “Understanding Judea and Samaria: historical, strategic and political dynamics in U.S.-Israel Relations,” referring to the biblical term for the West Bank preferred by members of the Israeli government and also used by Republicans on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), the chairman of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East, which hosted the hearing, asserted that Trump was only expressing his opposition to the annexation of territory not currently controlled by Israel.

“When the president is talking about annexing, again, I think it’s important to actually look at the map,” Lawler said. “Sixty percent of the West Bank is under Israeli control.” 

Lawler’s comments came in response to a remark from ranking member Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) highlighting Trump’s position on the issue.

“While some have argued that you don’t need to annex the West Bank because it’s already part of Israel, clearly that’s not what President Trump had in mind,” Sherman argued.

The back-and-forth set off a spat between the two members, with Sherman shouting a demand to be given additional time to respond to Lawler, and Lawler rebuking him in hushed tones as the hearing continued.

Lawler previously organized a private briefing for committee members with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on a similar subject.

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) pressed GOP witnesses over their apparent disagreements with Trump on the issue. Like Lawler, they made the case that Trump’s position had been misrepresented.

Eugene Kontorovich, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, argued that Trump’s position and the situation have not been “accurately characterized.”

“There have been proposals to extend Israeli civil law to those areas where Jewish communities are, in other words, to incorporate under Israeli law, parts of Judea and Samaria,” Kontorovich said. “President Trump’s plan is consistent with his 2020 vision for peace, where Israel would, in fact, expand Israeli civil jurisdiction specifically to those areas, and it seems his comments were simply a reaffirmation of that, that’s how I understand it.”

Schneider responded: “I think his comments were clear: ‘There will not be annexation,’ was I believe exactly what he said,” to which Kontorovich interjected, “of the West Bank.”

The Vision for Peace plan that Kontorovich referenced would also have created a Palestinian state. Plans announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the time to annex Israeli settlements immediately upon the release of that plan were rejected and blocked by Trump in 2020.

Multiple Democrats along with Democratic witness Jon Alterman, the Brzezinski chair in global security and geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, raised comparisons between the political and governance situation in the West Bank and eastern Ukraine — noting that ethnically Russian Ukrainians had a voice and vote in the Ukrainian government prior to the Russian invasion, and that they are now disenfranchised under Russian occupation. 

Alterman said that allowing annexation would also weaken the U.S.’ argument against Russia’s attempted annexation of parts of Ukraine.

Democratic lawmakers and Alterman also warned that full annexation would create a politically untenable position for Palestinians in the West Bank, where they are disenfranchised under Israeli control or expelled — a situation that could prompt further international outrage — or have voting rights and would have sufficient voting share to fundamentally change the nature of Israel. Alterman added that the status quo breeds Palestinian resentment and opposition from the global community.

“If we’re honest with ourselves, we need to recognize that not only are there competing claims here, but there are competing legitimate claims, and that’s if we just consider what’s clear from the historical record. When we bring in faith values and interests which aren’t universal, the issue becomes even more complicated,” Alterman said. He urged lawmakers to seek solutions that preserve space for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) floated the question of whether the U.S. should, instead of a full separation of Israel and a Palestinian state under a two-state solution and in light of the Palestinian Authority’s dysfunction, be “looking for a solution that is not a conventional state, one that has levels of autonomy, levels of governance, but … the borders would inherently be porous, the question of militarization would be dealt with in some ways as though it is one nation and in other ways clearly with a recognition of the facts on the ground.”

Alterman said that would inevitably involve certain compromises to Israel’s own sovereignty and decision making with “some sort of outside [entity].”

Kontorovich argued that such a proposal would make a “lot of sense,” comparing it to the situation in American Samoa, whose residents are not U.S. citizens and do not have a vote in federal elections. Issa responded that American Samoans do “stand among us and have a say.”

Mort Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, repeatedly emphasized that the PA continues to pay the families of terrorists who conduct attacks against Israel and indoctrinates Palestinian children with anti-Israel and antisemitic ideologies, and that Palestinian Arab opposition more broadly is responsible for the lack of peace in the region. Some Republicans echoed the same point.

Klein said that the PA’s actions “make peace virtually impossible until they have a dramatic reformation and transformation of their actions and their regime,” also noting the escalating security threats in the West Bank.

He focused in his opening remarks on the historical Jewish ties to the region and asserted that Palestinian Arabs have no such claims. “If Israel does not control the Jewish heartland in Judea and Samaria, peace will be impossible. Again, Judea and Samaria are Jewish Israeli land, it’s Jewish land, legally, religiously, biblically, politically and morally,” Klein said.

Sherman argued in his opening statement that modern borders should be based on the modern state of affairs, rather than historical Jewish territories — noting that Tel Aviv had not been Jewish territory for most of the Kingdom of Judea’s history, and that defining international borders based on the “maximum you ever controlled in history” would be a ridiculous exercise.

At the end of the hearing, a group of Code Pink activists confronted Yossi Dagan and Yisrael Ganz, the heads of two Israeli regional settlement councils, surrounding and screaming at them. Capitol Police demanded the activists leave the hearing room.

Ganz said in a statement, “We will do everything to apply sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.” Dagan added, “The hearing is a milestone in the cancellation of the lie of the ‘occupation.'”

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) will introduce a resolution this week affirming Israel’s sovereignty over the Temple Mount, a sacred site for Jews, Christians and Muslims, and demanding equal freedom of worship for all, Jewish Insider has learned.

The resolution, if adopted, would put the House of Representatives on record as affirming “the inalienable right of the Jewish people to full access [of] the Temple Mount and the right to pray and worship on the Temple Mount, consistent with the principles of religious freedom.” It also “reaffirms its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, as reaffirmed repeatedly in United States policy and law, which includes Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount.”

The resolution describes the Temple Mount as “the holiest site in Judaism” and “a holy site for Christians and Muslims,” and makes note of the impediments faced by Jews and Christians in accessing the site that have restricted their prayer rights. 

“Israel upholds religious freedom for all by ensuring access to holy sites for people of all faiths, however, Jewish and Christian rights on the Temple Mount are severely restricted as compared to the rights of Muslims,” the resolution reads. 

The resolution points out that “Muslims can currently enter the Temple Mount from 11 different gates, but non-Muslims can only enter the Temple Mount from 1 gate,” and that “the hours of the lone non-Muslim gate is severely restricted compared to the Muslim gates.”

“Non-Muslims are not permitted access to the Temple Mount on Friday or Saturday, preventing Jews from observing Shabbat upon the Temple Mount,” it states. 

Many rabbinic authorities, including the Israeli chief rabbinate, posit that Jews should not ascend to or pray on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site and the former site of the First and Second Temples, because of ritual purity questions. 

The Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock were built on the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Second Temple. Jews largely worship at the nearby Western Wall, which is the remaining portion of the barrier that once enclosed the Temple Mount.

Israel gained control of the Temple Mount in the Six Day War, and allowed Muslim worship to continue on the holy site unimpeded. After Israel made peace with Jordan in 1994, the status quo was formalized, by which the Jordanian Islamic Trust determined religious use of the site. 

While Jewish visits to the Temple Mount came to a near-total halt during the Second Intifada in 2000-2005, in the past decade, it has grown increasingly popular among religious Zionist Israelis and other Israeli Jews to ascend the mount, with numbers reaching the tens of thousands each year. This has also included praying on the site, usually silently, despite police instructing otherwise. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has always said that Israel will maintain the status quo on the Temple Mount, restricting Jewish prayer. However, in recent years, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has pushed for police to ignore any infractions, and he himself has prayed at the Temple Mount.

Over the past century, Arab and Palestinian leaders have used claims that Jews or Israel are trying to take over the Temple Mount to incite violence, from the 1929 Hebron Massacre to the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, which Hamas named the Al-Aqsa Flood. 

The resolution states that the House of Representatives “supports the Government of Israel in its efforts to safeguard the rights of Muslim worshippers, and integrity of Islamic structures there, in accordance with Israel’s current policies.”

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) cosponsored the resolution, while the right-wing Zionist Organization of America and the Endowment for Middle East Truth endorsed it.