Arab States grow increasingly suspicious of Israeli policies

by Dr Sania Faisal El-Husseini

A group of Somalis, carrying Somali flags and chanting slogans against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel, protest Israel’s decision to recognize Somaliland, gathering in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, on December 28, 2025. [Abuukar Mohamed Muhidin – Anadolu Agency]

Perhaps the most consequential outcome of the events of 7 October 2023, has been the unmasking of Israeli plans, the collapse of a façade it maintained in the Middle East region for decades. Israel is no longer seen merely as an occupying power in Palestine, an occupation that distorts history, manipulates geography, and commits grave crimes against civilians. It has also emerged, with increasing clarity, as a disruptive regional actor, one that works deliberately to weaken the region’s centers of power in pursuit of its own dominance and control over the Middle East.

For years, especially in the past decade, the United States and Israel have invested heavily in portraying Iran as the region’s principal strategic adversary. This narrative has delivered tangible gains for Israel. It has helped isolate and constrain Iran as a competing regional power, while simultaneously diverting the attention of influential Arab states, particularly in the Gulf, away from Israel itself. In doing so, it has drawn these states into a prolonged confrontation with a historic rival, reshaping regional priorities in ways that ultimately serve Israel’s long-term strategic interests.

Significant and telling developments in recent days point to a growing Arab awareness of the dangers posed by Israel’s deepening penetration of the region. The Saudi strike against forces backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Yemen came as a clear expression of this shift. Despite the overlap between Saudi and Emirati objectives in Yemen, most notably their shared opposition to the Houthis, Riyadh appears to have made a deliberate decision to contain and isolate the Emirati presence there.

The relationship between Israel and the UAE is no longer concealed. It predates the 2020 normalisation agreement between the two countries, but since that moment it has moved decisively public and official. The UAE has increasingly assisted Israel in advancing its strategic objectives across the region in return of Israeli favours, even when doing so has come at the expense of Arab allies. Against this backdrop, Saudi Arabia has opted to block what it views as a dangerous Emirati footprint in Yemen, even if that choice carries costs for the broader campaign against the Houthis and Iran.

This recalibration raises a question that would have seemed implausible not long ago: have the UAE, and Israel behind it, come to be perceived as a greater threat to Saudi Arabia and the Arab world than Iran itself, particularly at a moment when Riyadh is engaged in negotiations with the Houthis and Iran aimed at de-escalating the conflict in Yemen?

These developments are also directly linked to the war in the Sudan, which erupted in 2023. From a strategic standpoint, Sudan commands a long and consequential stretch of the Red Sea coastline, alongside other critical considerations. That presence on the Red Sea carries particular weight for Israel, which is keen to ensure that this corridor does not fall under the control of a hostile power.

In Sudan, the UAE has backed the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the country’s official state institutions, the army, whose legitimacy is recognised and supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the broader Arab world, and the international community, as Sudan’s lawful representative. The situation resembles a proxy confrontation, between the UAE and Arab states.

Notably, the Abdel Fattah al-Burhan government severed ties with the UAE, citing Abu Dhabi’s provision of advanced weaponry to the RSF. This allegation has also been raised by lawmakers in the United States Congress, and it has gone so far as to prompt Sudan to file a case against the UAE before the International Court of Justice.

Added to this, the UAE’s financial support for Ethiopia during the Egyptian–Ethiopian dispute over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, at the expense of the vital interests of Egypt and Sudan. Further more, since 2016, the UAE has ranked among the largest investors underpinning the Ethiopian economy. That relationship subsequently evolved into a strategic partnership, becoming particularly visible in the dam file from 2020 onward, the same year the UAE normalised relations with Israel.

Israeli–Ethiopian ties are among Israel’s most significant relationships in Africa. They date back to the 1950s and have expanded across security, political, and technological domains, positioning Ethiopia as a longstanding strategic ally for Israel on the continent. Ethiopia’s geography, adjacent to the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandab, and the Horn of Africa, helps explain the exceptional depth of this partnership, given the area’s acute strategic importance to Israel.

Israel has established a strategic surveillance platform in Ethiopia and maintains a security presence alongside intelligence and military cooperation, so extensive that Ethiopia has at times been described as Israel’s security gateway to Africa. Israel also provides Ethiopia with technical support in the management of water resources, a role that lends weight to assessments pointing to Israeli involvement in the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

This brings us to the latest development, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, a move that has sparked widespread controversy. Israel is, to date, the only state in the world to extend recognition to this secessionist entity. Ethiopia, however, preceded Israel by signing a memorandum of understanding granting it maritime access to Somaliland’s coastline. The memorandum, yet to be implemented, provides for the lease of roughly 20 kilometers of Somaliland’s coast to Ethiopia for a period of fifty years.

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland appears to be a calculated strategic escalation, closely tied to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, and carefully timed to coincide with shifts in the regional security and political landscape. In the aftermath of the Gaza war, and amid escalating confrontations with the Houthis in the Red Sea, Israel has increasingly sought coastal partners, particularly near the southern reaches of the Red Sea, an area it now treats as a matter of national security.

Somaliland has existed as a de facto entity separate from Somalia since 1991, but no state has formally recognised it. Crucially, Somaliland possesses a long coastline facing the Bab al-Mandab, one of the world’s most sensitive maritime outpost, underscoring the strategic logic behind Israel’s unprecedented move.

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland opens the door to normalisation within the framework of the Abraham Accords and to maritime-security cooperation in the Red Sea. Through this move, Israel is not positioning itself solely for a confrontation with the Houthis and Iran in their own backyards along the Red Sea, it is also challenging the Turkish presence there, Turkey being Somalia’s closest ally in the region.

This helps explain the timing and urgency behind Israel’s decision to proceed with recognition of the Somaliland. The relationship between Turkey and Somalia is Ankara’s deepest partnership in Africa and can be described as a comprehensive strategic alliance. Turkey has positioned itself as Somalia’s foremost international patron. For Ankara, Somalia serves as a gateway to a sustained presence in the Horn of Africa. It hosts Camp TURKSOM, Turkey’s largest overseas military base, where the modern Somali army has been organised and trained.

Turkey also maintains a presence at the Port of Mogadishu, giving Ankara a maritime foothold opposite to the Gulf of Aden. Against this backdrop, an Israeli presence in Somaliland, near the Bab al-Mandab, constitutes a direct challenge to Turkish influence in Somalia, painstakingly built over the past fourteen years. It represents an intrusion into a zone Ankara regards as a natural extension of its maritime reach beyond the Mediterranean.

This brings us back to the question of timing, why Israel chose this precise moment to recognise Somaliland. The decision may also be linked to moves Israel initiated last week to form a trilateral military force with Greece and Cyprus, aimed at countering Turkey in the northern and eastern Mediterranean. In both cases, Turkey appears to be the primary target of Israeli strategy.

Should such a trilateral force materialise, it would alter the strategic balance in a theater that currently tilts in Turkey’s favor. This comes amid an intensifying struggle over maritime competition for gas in the Mediterranean Sea. The dynamic is further intertwined with the Turkish- Libyan relationship and the maritime boundary delimitation agreement governing offshore gas exploration, an accord opposed by Israel, Greece, and Cyprus, and symbolising of the broader contest over spheres of influence in the Mediterranean.

These overlapping developments may also shed light on unresolved questions surrounding the recent explosion of an aircraft carrying Libyan military officials. The officials were on an official visit to Turkey and reportedly played a key role in coordinating bilateral relations between Libya and Turkey.

The trajectory of the current confrontation in Syria between Israel and Turkey appears to have entered a more complex phase, one that helps explain Israel’s efforts to contain Turkey across sensitive theatres in both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Turkey has recently deployed an integrated array of radar systems and air-defence missiles in northern Syria, a move Israel has interpreted as a direct threat to the freedom of operation of its military aviation.

The Israeli-Turkish clash in Syria is thus intensifying against the backdrop of an expanding Israeli military and security footprint inside the country. Israel has also provided military backing to Kurdish and Druze minorities, a policy framed as leverage to fragment and weaken the Syrian state. This approach stands in clear contradiction to the positions of both Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which support the preservation of a cohesive Syrian state.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by the United States and Israel, have refused to comply with an agreement reached eight months ago that would have required their integration into Syria’s official armed forces and under state authority. Turkey rejects any continued SDF military presence in northern Syria, viewing it as a direct challenge to Turkish national security.

Against this backdrop in Syria, and amid the escalating confrontation between Israel and Turkey, Israel’s initiatives in the Mediterranean Sea alongside Greece and Cyprus, as well as its normalisation with Somaliland, appear as calibrated instruments of pressure on Turkey. Together, these moves reflect an Israeli attempt to impose new power equations across the region and to reshape the strategic environment in ways that constrain Turkish influence.

The reality that regional states ignored for decades was that Israel exists as a hostile entity toward all of them, one that operates to weaken its surroundings precisely because doing so ensures its own dominance. Israel has neither forgotten nor will it ever forget that it is encircled by enmity. That perception lies at the core of its security and military doctrine toward neighbouring states. What appears to be changing today is not Israel’s outlook, but these states which seem to be increasingly apprehensive of Israel’s role and the strategic designs it is pursuing.

Ultimately, it becomes clear that the disarmament of Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as Lebanon’s internal divisions, serve Israel’s interests at Lebanon’s expense. Likewise, the Israeli insistance on the disarmament of Palestinian factions, while Israel continues its occupation, territorial expansion, and assaults on Palestinian land, and persists in denying Palestinian rights, ultimately benefits Israel at the expense of the future of the Palestinian cause.

The same logic applies in Syria. Strengthening the position of armed minorities backed by Israel comes at the cost of Syria’s unity and stability, and works against the interests of the Syrian state itself.