Israel has turned Somaliland into a permanent liability and the Houthis have now declared any Israeli presence there will be treated as a military target. Right, so Israel is now stuck with a problem it can’t walk away from, and it created all by itself. By recognising Somaliland, Israel didn’t score a quiet diplomatic win, it handed the Houthis a standing justification to widen the fight. Because this isn’t just about one recognition announcement or one angry response from Yemen. It’s about a pattern Israel keeps repeating, where symbolic moves are treated as cost-free, and then someone else prices them in properly. Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has now said, plainly and without caveat, that any Israeli presence in Somaliland will be treated as a military target. Not bases. Not troops. Presence. That single word locks Israel into a condition it doesn’t control, in a corridor it already can’t stabilise. Somaliland thought recognition meant legitimacy. Israel thought it meant leverage. What they’ve actually done is turn the Red Sea into an even tighter vice, and neither of them gets to decide how that plays out now. Right, so Israel has recognised Somaliland, and it has done it as if this were a quiet administrative act, a bit of diplomatic paperwork that could be filed away and forgotten. That assumption has already collapsed. Recognition is never neutral in a live conflict zone, and it is never symbolic when it happens inside a maritime corridor that is already under pressure. Recognition is a signal, whether the people signing it like that or not, and in this case it has been read as exactly that by the one actor Israel really cannot afford to misread right now. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has said openly, repeatedly, and without any hedging that any Israeli presence in Somaliland will be treated as a military target. Not bases. Not troops. Not some future installation if one appears later. Any presence. That single word matters because it wipes out the grey area Israel normally relies on when it pushes influence quietly. There is no room left here for advisers, technical teams, intelligence cooperation, or discreet naval access. Presence itself has been defined as aggression, and aggression has already been cleared for response.