SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
houthis
Israel Becomes First Nation to Recognize Somaliland—But Still Rejects Palestine
One foreign policy analyst said that Israel views Somaliland as a "strategic location as a launch pad for strikes on Yemen and potentially a place to forcibly 'relocate' Palestinians to."
Dec 26, 2025
Israel became the first nation to recognize Somaliland as a sovereign state on Friday, a move that was met with criticism from international observers who questioned its continued unwillingness to recognize a Palestinian state.
Somaliland, a breakaway region in the north of Somalia that is home to more than 6 million people, declared independence in 1991, but until now, no United Nations member states have recognized its claim.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described his government's recognition of the territory as being “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords,” a deal brokered by US President Donald Trump for Israel to normalize relations with some of its Arab neighbors, which has itself been accused of disregarding the issue of Palestinian sovereignty.
Speaking over a video call with Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, the president of Somaliland, Netanyahu said he was signing "Israel's official recognition of Somaliland and its right of self-determination," calling the friendship between the two nations "seminal and historic."
In a statement, Abdullahi said Israel's recognition "represents a milestone in Somaliland's long-standing pursuit of international legitimacy, reaffirming its historical, legal, and moral entitlement to statehood."
However, a report from the Guardian suggested that Israel's recognition of Somaliland has less to do with the self-determination of its people than with Israel's military interests. It cited a November report from a prominent Israeli think tank, which argued that Somaliland could be used as a base of military operations against Yemen's Houthis.
Somaliland, located in the horn of Africa just south of the Arabian Peninsula, already hosts an air base that the United Arab Emirates has used to conduct operations against the Yemeni militant group, which—until a "ceasefire" agreement was reached in October—launched regular attacks on Israel and its vessels in the Red Sea in what it said was an effort to pressure it to stop its genocidal military campaign in Gaza.
Egypt and Turkey condemned Israel's agreement with Somaliland, saying, "This initiative by Israel, which aligns with its expansionist policy and its efforts to do everything to prevent the recognition of a Palestinian state, constitutes overt interference in Somalia’s domestic affairs.”
Foreign ministers for the two nations joined those of Somalia and neighboring Djibouti on a call following the development, where they called for the continued unity of Somalia as an institution and condemned Israel's efforts "to displace the Palestinian people from their land."
Adil Haque, a professor at Rutgers Law School, pointed out on social media that, in August, Netanyahu met with Somaliland's leadership "offering recognition in exchange for helping Israel to illegally deport Palestinians from Gaza."
Somaliland was one of many nations reportedly approached by Israel to warehouse Palestinians exiled from the strip permanently—others included Indonesia, Uganda, South Sudan, and Libya.
Following reports at the time that Somalia was also in consideration, its president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, responded that "the idea of removing Palestine from their own land and putting them into another, other people’s land—I don’t see that that’s a solution at all."
A senior Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity with Israel's Channel 12 reportedly agreed that Netanyahu's recognition of Somaliland undermines his repeated assertions that there will never be a Palestinian state. As the Times of Israel summarized: "The official... points out that while Israel is the first country to grant recognition to Somaliland, the rest of the world considers the breakaway region an integral part of Somalia."
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a fellow at the Palestinian Policy Network and a producer at AJ+, said: "To state the obvious, Israel wouldn’t recognize anyone unless there was something in it for them. Israel doesn’t give a shit about Somaliland apart from its strategic location as a launch pad for strikes on Yemen and potentially a place to forcibly 'relocate' Palestinians to."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israel Bombs Yemen as IDF Rolls Through Gaza City, Displacing Hundreds of Thousands
Dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombs and bullets, including many women and children, as IDF tanks and troops pushed deeper into Gaza City.
Sep 25, 2025
Israeli forces on Thursday resumed airstrikes on Yemen—whose Houthi rebels have been launching strikes targeting Israel in solidarity with Palestine—while pushing deeper into Gaza City, killing dozens of Palestinians, displacing hundreds of thousands of others, and trapping up to 1 million more.
An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said dozens of warplanes and air support units pounded alleged "command headquarters of the Houthi General Staff” and other buildings used by members of the rebel army also known as Ansar Allah.
Thursday's strikes followed last week's IDF bombing of a media complex in the Yemeni capital Sanaa that killed 31 journalists and four other people including a child in what the Committee to Protect Journalists called the world's deadliest single attack on media workers in 16 years.
This, after an IDF airstrike last month assassinated Houthi officials including Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi. US forces—which have been bombing Yemen since 2002 as part of the so-called War on Terror—have also carried out airstrikes in Yemen that have killed and wounded hundreds of civilians.
The Israeli and US strikes came in retaliation for Houthi missile and drone attacks on Israel and Red Sea shipping. The Houthis and Iran have been the only actors in the world that have answered Israel's genocidal war on Gaza with military force.
The latest Israeli bombing of Yemen came as IDF tanks and troops pushed deeper into Gaza City as part of Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, an offensive aimed at conquering, occupying, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians from the embattled coastal exclave.
Gaza officials said dozens of Palestinians have been killed since dawn Thursday, including 25 aid-seekers. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that "intensified strikes on Gaza City, including on tents, residential buildings, [and] infrastructure continue to inflict heavy casualties."
The relentless Israeli airstrikes that hit multiple areas across Gaza City today; forcing thousands of Palestinian families to flee their homes into overcrowded and unsafe areas with no shelter, food, or medical care. pic.twitter.com/5Oj9VqtDFY
— Daniella Modos - Cutter -SEN (@DmodosCutter) September 25, 2025
Among the victims of Thursday's IDF strikes were at least 10 children and three women killed when the houses and tents in which they were sheltering were bombed, according to The Associated Press.
UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher said Thursday that Palestinian children are being “killed while sleeping, playing, queuing for food and water, [and] seeking medical care."
“They’ve been bombed, maimed, starved, burned alive, buried in the rubble of their homes, separated from their parents... scraping through the rubble for food, enduring amputations without anesthetic,” Fletcher added.
More than 300,000 Palestinians have fled for their lives amid Israel's onslaught and engineered famine, while as many as 1 million others remain trapped in Gaza.
At least 65,419 Palestinians have been killed by US-backed Israeli forces since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—although experts caution that the actual death toll is likely much higher. More than 167,100 others have been wounded, and thousands more are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble.
Israel is facing a genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where the International Criminal Court last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Israel’s Strike on Yemen Newspaper Offices Was ‘Deadliest Global Attack’ on Journalists in 16 Years: Press Freedom Group
The Committee to Protect Journalists said Israel's attack on a media complex in Sana'a last week killed 31 journalists.
Sep 19, 2025
Israel's airstrikes on a media complex in Yemen last week resulted in the largest single attack on journalists the world has seen in 16 years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
In a report released Friday, the group said that 31 journalists from two government-run newspapers based in Sana'a were killed in the strikes on September 10, along with four others, including one child.
Nasser Al-Khadri, editor-in-chief of the newspaper 26 September, called the attack on his newsroom an "unprecedented massacre of journalists."
"It is a brutal and unjustified attack that targeted innocent people whose only crime was working in the media field, armed with nothing but their pens and words,” Al-Khadri told the CPJ.
According to CPJ, it was the second-largest attack on the press they've ever recorded, and the worst since 2009, when 32 journalists were massacred as part of a political ambush in the Philippines.
The Israeli government has often defended its attacks on civilian infrastructure by claiming that it houses militants. But in these strikes, the IDF's media desk acknowledged that it was targeting what it referred to as the "Public Relations Department" for the Houthis, also known as Ansar-Allah.
Shortly after Israel's genocidal war in Gaza began in 2023, the militant group, which controls large parts of Yemen, began to launch drone and missile strikes against shipping vessels in the Red Sea and directly against Israel in what they have described as an effort to support Palestinians under fire. They have said they will stop these attacks when Israel reaches an agreement with Hamas to end the war in Gaza.
Israel has repeatedly bombed Yemen in recent weeks, including launching a strike on its main airport and large amounts of civilian infrastructure. On the same day it bombed the media complex, it also hit residential areas in Sana'a as well as a medical facility.
In a post on X, the official account for the Israel Defense Forces justified striking the newspapers by saying that they are "responsible for distributing and disseminating propaganda messages in the media, including speeches by Houthi leader Abdul-Malik and statements from spokesman Yahya Saree." For this reason, Israel described the journalists as "military targets."
But the CPJ says that "as civilians, journalists are protected under international law, including those working for state-run or armed group-affiliated outlets, unless they take direct part in hostilities."
Niku Jafarnia, a Bahrain and Yemen researcher for Human Rights Watch, explained in more detail on Monday:
Radio and television facilities are civilian objects and cannot be targeted. They are legitimate targets only if they are used in a way that makes an “effective contribution to military action.” However, civilian broadcasting facilities are not rendered legitimate military targets simply because they are pro-Houthi or anti-Israel, or report on the laws of war violations by one side or the other, as this does not directly contribute to military operations.
Al-Khadri said that Israel's strikes hit his newsroom around 4:45 pm, right when staff were finishing up the publication of the weekly paper.
Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen analyst, noted that “Since it is a weekly publication, not a daily one, staff were gathered at the publishing house to prepare for distribution, significantly increasing the number of people present in the compound."
The CPJ classified the 31 journalists killed in the strike as having been "murdered" by Israel, meaning that they were deliberately targeted specifically for their work. Over the past decade, the group says, 1 in 6 of the world's murdered journalists have been killed by Israel.
While estimates from different groups vary, Israel's war in Gaza is considered by far the deadliest conflict in the world for journalists, with more killed than any other conflict in the world combined. In August, the CPJ reported that 192 journalists, nearly all Palestinians, have been killed since October 7, 2023, while other groups put the death toll even higher.
In attacks last month that drew similar worldwide condemnation, Israel conducted what was described as a "double tap" strike on Khan Younis' Nasser Hospital aimed at killing first responders who arrived after the first strike. Twenty people were killed in total, including rescue workers and at least five journalists.
Not long before, Israel carried out the targeted assassination of Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif and five other journalists, claiming without evidence that they were part of "a Hamas terrorist cell.”
“Since October 7, 2023, Israel has emerged as a regional killer of journalists, with repeated incidents in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, and now Yemen confirming Israel’s longstanding pattern of labeling journalists as terrorists or propagandists to justify their killings,” said CPJ regional program leaderSara Qudah.
“Israel’s September 10 strikes on two newspaper offices in Yemen marks an alarming escalation, extending Israel’s war on journalism far beyond the genocide in Gaza," Qudah said. "This latest killing spree is not only a grave violation of international law, but also a terrifying warning to journalists across the region: no place is safe.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular