Somaliland: Mixed motivations

Last week Israel was the first country in the world to establish diplomatic relations with Somaliland.

- Gwynne Dyer

Not Somalia, a wreck of a country on the East African coast that has been mired in civil war for the past thirty-five years, but Somaliland, a different country just north of there that has been peaceful, relatively prosperous and even democratic for all those years.This is causing a diplomatic outcry because many countries suspect that the deal has a secret clause. They think Somaliland’s president, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, may have promised to let Israel offload Gaza's two million Palestinians onto his country in return for recognising Somaliland as an independent state.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s motivation is clear. He still wants to expel the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip if possible, although his own cabinet will not let him defy President Trump's order to accept a ceasefire. But he knows how volatile Mr Trump is: just one Hamas strike could turn him around and let Mr Netanyahu restart the war.

Mr Netanyahu is slow-walking the talks on moving to the second phase of the ceasefire, while the Israeli forces keep trying to provoke Hamas into doing something stupid (401 Palestinians killed and 1,108 injured since the ceasefire). But even if Israel got a green light from Mr Trump to expel the Palestinians, where would it send them?