President of breakaway Somaliland to visit Israel soon to join Abraham Accords: report

The president of the breakaway state of Somaliland, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, intends to pay an official visit to Israel later this month, where he will join the controversial Abraham Accords normalisation deals, Israel’s Kan public broadcaster reported on Wednesday.

“According to sources in Somaliland, the president intends during his visit to Israel to formally join the Abraham Accords,” Kan said.

The Abraham Accords are agreements to normalise ties signed in 2020 between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain under US sponsorship. Morocco later also acceded to the accords, which are highly unpopular in the Arab world and viewed by Palestinians as a betrayal of their cause.

Israel formally recognised Somaliland, which has been de facto self-ruling since 1991, as an independent state on 26 December. No other country has done this and its recognition was widely condemned and criticised around the world.

There are reports that Israel could build a military base in the breakaway region, which lies in the north of Somalia and occupies a strategic position on the Gulf of Aden.

Somalia has fiercely denounced Israel’s recognition of Somaliland as a separate state, reaffirming its commitment to its territorial integrity, which it considers “non-negotiable”.

The President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told Al-Jazeera this week that Somaliland secretly had ties to Israel for some time before the recognition and that it was planning to accede to an Israeli request to take in Palestinians forcibly displaced from the Gaza Strip by Israel.

Somaliland however denied this, saying on Thursday that its relationship with Israel was “purely diplomatic” and conducted “in full respect of international law”.

Kan said that while in Israel Abdullahi will sign additional bilateral agreements “in a wide range of fields” including “agriculture, mining, oil, security, infrastructure, tourism, and others.”

It also said that the Somaliland president made a previous secret trip to Israel.

Kan did not specify when exactly the visit would take place but speculated that it would happen in the second week of January.

The Arab League has described Israel’s recognition of Somaliland as ““posing a threat to international peace and security,” stressing that it reflects Tel Aviv’s ambition to pursue “political, security, and economic agendas that are categorically rejected.”