Israel recognised Somaliland to gain leverage, but once Somalia declared it an invasion, their next move either confirms the breach or concedes failure. Right, so Israel has now been accused of invading Somalia - not striking it, not threatening it, not posturing around it, but by recognising part of the country as independent and sovereign, which Somalia argues constitutes invasion under international law, namely Somaliland - and that is a problem Israel cannot just talk its way out of. Somalia is the state on the receiving end, Palestinians are being dragged into the conversation now as well, and the reason this matters is because this isn’t a rhetorical row that Benjamín Netanyahu has put Israel in, it’s a legal dead-end. Because this isn’t really about Somaliland at all. That’s just the trigger. What’s actually happened here is something we’ve seen before: Israel treating recognition as if it rewrites consent, then discovering too late that consent doesn’t work that way. Once Somalia called this an invasion as they have now done, the frame locked. So from this point on, there is no next move Israel can make that improves its position. And that’s the part most coverage is still carefully stepping around. Right, so Israel says it has recognised Somaliland. Somalia says Israel has invaded it. That sounds like rhetorical escalation until you stop treating recognition as a word and start treating it as an act with legal consequences, because international law doesn’t care what Israel calls this move, it cares what it does to sovereignty, consent, and territorial control, and once you follow that chain properly there is no clean exit left.