Why Somalilanders Are Watching Israel’s Election
Said Mohamud Ahmed
Doctor of Education Candidate
October 27, 2026
In the last week, I have watched something new in Somaliland. Many Somalilanders now know what is going on in Israel. Their journalists talk about it, their televisions carry it, and their followers discuss it openly, often with direct support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
I never followed an Israeli election before this one. I did not know the parties, I did not know the candidates, and I did not care who won. That was not indifference to another country. It was distance. Israel was far from my daily life, and its politics did not touch the question that has shaped my life, the question of Somaliland.
That distance ended when Israel became the best friend Somaliland has found in the international system. On December 26, 2025, Israel became the first member of the United Nations to formally recognize Somaliland as an independent state. After more than three decades of waiting, of building institutions without a seat at the table, that recognition changed how many Somalilanders see Israel. It was no longer a distant country. It was the country that said yes when others would not.
That is why, since last week, I have seen so many Somalilanders talking about Israel’s election, and talking about it directly, with support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israelis vote today, October 27, 2026, for all 120 seats in the Knesset, and a government will need 61 seats to govern. Somalilanders are not voting in that election. We are watching it, because we now have a stake in the friendship that the election may shape.
For me, the second reason is memory. On December 29, 2025, at the United Nations Security Council, Israel’s representative acknowledged the mass killings committed against the people of Somaliland in 1988. Somaliland’s government welcomed that acknowledgment, and so did I. The world looked away from Hargeisa in 1988, and for many of us, hearing that truth named at the United Nations, by the country that had just recognized us, was not a small thing. It was recognition of our suffering as well as recognition of our state.
The third reason is history, and it is a history many Somalilanders are only now learning in full. Israel recognized Somaliland when it first became independent on June 26, 1960, and it recognized Somaliland a second time on December 26, 2025. President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi has made that point himself. Two recognitions, separated by 65 years, tell a story that is hard to ignore. The first came at our birth as a state. The second came after our long return to that statehood.
I wrote this because I saw my own audiences and followers, people from Somaliland, talking about Israel as if it were their own election. I understand that feeling, and I share the gratitude behind it. But I also want to be honest about what it is and what it is not. Support from Somaliland is gratitude and interest, not a vote. An election can change a government, and a government can change a policy. Somaliland’s case must therefore rest, in the end, on Somaliland itself, on its peace, its elections, its institutions, and its history.
Still, I do not find it strange that Somalilanders care now. We care because Israel cared first, in memory and in recognition. A country that names our dead and recognizes our state will not feel distant to us again. That is why an election in Jerusalem feels close in Hargeisa, and why so many Somalilanders are watching today with hope, and with a clear memory of why they started watching at all.
#Hayaantribune
