Israel’s recognition of Somaliland landed like a dropped plate in a room full of diplomats pretending not to hear the crash. Somalia protested. The Arab League scolded. Turkey and Egypt warned darkly about precedent. The African Union fretted about stability. Western officials whispered about process. All the usual theater. What none of them wanted to say out loud was the obvious truth staring back at them. Israel did nothing radical. It applied the rules.
For thirty years, Somaliland has functioned as a state. Not a slogan, not a cause, not a grievance economy. A state. Permanent population. Defined territory. Effective government. Capacity to conduct foreign relations. The four tests of the Montevideo Convention, met quietly and consistently since 1991.
Add a fifth fact that the convention does not even ask for, but history does. Somaliland has committed exactly zero acts of international terrorism. No hijackings. No embassy bombings. No exported jihad. No global fundraising networks laundering blood as politics.
Now place that beside the bitter irony the system refuses to confront. The same international order that loses its mind over Somaliland has spent decades recognizing and subsidizing a so-called state project in the region that fails all four Montevideo tests. No defined territory under sovereign control. No effective government with a monopoly on force. No independent foreign policy capacity. No coherent administration. Plenty of armed factions. Plenty of glorified murder. Plenty of international terror. And yet that project is treated as sacred, inevitable, untouchable.
Israel’s move is not a rejection of the two-state idea. It is the return of that idea to reality. It is what happens when you stop rewarding dysfunction and start recognizing behavior.
This is where the story gets more interesting, and more uncomfortable for the people who built their careers on the old script. Israel did not act alone or in a vacuum. It acted in parallel with a growing effort, led alongside the United Arab Emirates, to stabilize and formalize viable political entities where chaos has been artificially preserved.
South Yemen is the most obvious case. A place with borders, ports, institutions and a population that remembers being a country before it was crushed into a failed union. A place whose instability has been exploited by militias, smugglers and regional powers precisely because it lacks recognition and accountability.
The pattern is not hard to see. Where viable self-rule exists, the system blocks recognition in the name of stability. Where instability exists, the system pours money and legitimacy into it in the name of justice. The result has been predictable. Endless war. Endless mediation. Endless conferences. Endless graves.
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland punctures that logic. It says something deeply offensive to the professional peace industry. Sovereignty is not a vibe. It is a performance. You earn it by governing, not by suffering louder than your neighbor.
The Montevideo Convention was written to prevent exactly this kind of farce. Four criteria. No ideology. No exceptions for good marketing. No exemptions for permanent victimhood. A state either meets the test or it does not. Recognition is declaratory, not magical. The law does not create states. Reality does.
That is why the backlash was so ferocious. Not because of Africa. Not because of Somalia. Because once you apply Montevideo honestly, the entire regional narrative collapses. Somaliland passes. Kurdistan passes. South Yemen is close. Puntland is not far behind. And the one project that dominates every UN agenda, every campus protest, every moral lecture, does not.
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Supporters of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a coalition of separatist groups seeking to restore the state of South Yemen, hold South Yemen flags during a rally, in Aden, Yemen, Dec. 25, 2025. Arabic reads, 'announcement of South Arab state'
(Photo: AP Photo)
Israel knows this better than anyone because it has spent decades being lectured about two states by people who have no interest in states that actually work. The demand was never about peace. It was about control of the narrative. Israel was supposed to comply, apologize and subsidize a fiction forever.
Instead, Israel flipped the board. By recognizing Somaliland, Israel did something almost quaint in its simplicity. It treated sovereignty as conditional on responsibility. It recognized borders that are kept, institutions that function and a population that chose ballots over bombs. It sent a signal that the era of endless indulgence for violent non-states might be ending.
The parallel work with the UAE in South Yemen reinforces the point. Stability does not come from pretending failed unions are sacred. It comes from aligning political legitimacy with lived reality. Ports that function. Governments that govern. Security forces that answer to civilians. Borders that mean something.
Guy Goldstein Photo: CourtesyThe irony is sharp enough to enjoy. The same diplomats who demand a two-state solution in Israel recoil when Israel recognizes an actual state. The same institutions that preach international law panic when someone applies it. The same voices that excuse terror in the name of liberation cannot tolerate a liberation that produces order instead of chaos.
This is not about redrawing the map recklessly. It is about admitting that the map already changed while the paperwork stayed frozen. The Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant. These regions are unstable not because there are too many states, but because there are too few real ones.
Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is a warning shot, and a quiet invitation. Build something real, and you might be treated as real. Choose governance over grievance and you might get sovereignty instead of sympathy.
That is the Uno reverse. Not defiance for its own sake. Just the rules, applied at last.
- Guy Goldstein is a strategist, advisor, writer and producer. He is the CEO of Revenue Path, a consultancy that helps leaders design the strategies and processes that generate growth.