Recognising Somaliland locks Israel into a spreading diplomatic fight that delays Gaza de-escalation and buys Netanyahu time - or does it? Right, so Israel has just locked itself into a diplomatic fight it can’t quietly reverse, and Benjamin Netanyahu is the one who signed it in. The recognition of Somaliland isn’t a clever foreign-policy play or some niche Africa story that can be parked and forgotten. It’s a self-inflicted rupture with the African Union, the Arab world, and regional institutions that exist precisely to stop this sort of thing happening. Somalia is demanding reversal, continental bodies are closing ranks, and even Israel’s usual political cover has gone missing. That alone should tell you this isn’t normal. And here’s the pattern that matters: whenever Netanyahu is boxed in at home, instability abroad stops looking like a risk and starts looking like a tool. This move doesn’t create leverage, it creates drag — more isolation, more hostility, more delay — at the exact moment de-escalation would end his political survival. Right, so let’s strip this of ceremony and get straight to what actually happened, because the order matters and the consequences only make sense if you don’t pretend this drifted into being by accident. Israel has formally recognised Somaliland as an independent state, the first country in the world to do so since Somaliland declared independence from Somalia in 1991, and that recognition has been signed off personally by Benjamin Netanyahu, tied explicitly to Israel’s normalisation agenda, and followed immediately by reciprocal moves. That’s the act. Everything else follows from it, and everything that followed was predictable, immediate, and hostile. It’s almost as if Israel wants to cause massive disruption frankly, you can also fill your boots coming up with reasons for why that is as well.