As 2026 dawns, the Arab world finds itself staring at a strategic catastrophe that is as much a product of its own making as it is a result of foreign design. The formal recognition of the Republic of Somaliland by Israel is not merely a diplomatic shift in the Horn of Africa; it is a definitive blow to the anti-normalisation camp and a stark revelation of the “strategic void” that now defines Arab foreign policy—if one ever existed.

While the League of Arab States (LAS) and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) remain trapped in a cycle of hollow condemnations and “statements of concern,” the geopolitical map of the Red Sea is being redrawn with clinical precision.

Without a deep dive into history, it is essential to understand the present, one must look at the deep-seated historical roots of this manoeuvre. The recognition of Somaliland is a modern revival of the Israeli “Periphery Doctrine”—a strategy designed to leapfrog the hostile Arab core by building alliances with non-Arab or marginalised actors on the fringes.

This logic dates back to at least 1944, when the Jewish Organisation for Refugees petitioned the Ethiopian Empire to allocate the Harar region as a Jewish homeland. While the Ethiopian Emperor eventually refused—not out of principle, but because the Zionists demanded the entire province—the seed of a strategic alliance between the Horn and the future Zionist state was planted. Today, by recognising Somaliland, Israel is completing a pincer movement that secures its presence in the Bab al-Mandab, a feat it could never have achieved without the vacuum left by Arab indifference.

The Israeli focus in this perspective has always been on non-Arab countries that hold the vital resources upon which the Arab world depends—most notably, water. For decades, Israel’s long-term strategy has prioritised relations with Turkey, knowing that the water security of major Arab states like Syria and Iraq is tethered to Turkish headwaters. We see the same pattern today with Ethiopia; by........

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