(10-09-23) MOGADISHU – Hebrew media reported on Friday that Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen is pushing for normalisation with Somalia. However, he is encountering resistance from Israel’s National Security Council.
The Times of Israel reports that Tzachi Hanegbi, the head of the National Security Council, is against establishing a relationship with Somalia. Hanegbi argues that Israel stands to gain little from diplomatic ties with Somalia, one of the world’s most economically disadvantaged nations.
Despite the opposition, Cohen is intent on normalising relations, primarily to secure Somalia’s vote in international forums where it has historically voted against Israel. According to insiders, meetings have already been held between senior leaders from both countries.
The diplomatic initiative is purportedly grounded in the Abraham Accords, an agreement that enabled Israel to establish relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco in 2020. While Palestinian leaders labelled the agreement as a ‘betrayal’, it nonetheless paused Israel’s contentious plans for West Bank annexation
A key signal of Somalia’s openness to such diplomatic relations came in March, when Ambassador Idd Bedel Mohamed, former Alternate Ambassador of Somalia to the United Nations, spoke at an international conference at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. There, Mohamed expressed complete confidence in Somalia’s unified leadership — President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud and Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre — and their ability to push agendas through the legislative bodies. He explicitly stated he was “100 percent sure” that the Somali leadership welcomes the Abraham Accords.
While a face-to-face meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Somali president took place in Nairobi in 2016, diplomatic exchanges since have largely been limited to behind-the-scenes talks among lower-tier diplomats.
Israel has already successfully courted Muslim-majority countries in Africa, such as Chad, which has opened an embassy in Israel, and Sudan, making the prospect of Somalia-Israel relations more plausible.
Halqabsi News
