Israel plays the Uno reverse card on the two-state obsession

5 comments

1. Israel’s recognition of Somaliland exposes a deep contradiction in the international system’s obsession with the two-state solution.

   Somaliland has functioned as a stable, self-governing state for over 30 years, meeting all the criteria of the Montevideo Convention, including a permanent population, defined territory, effective government, and the ability to conduct foreign relations.

   It has also avoided exporting terrorism or regional instability. Despite this, it remains largely unrecognized.

   At the same time, the international community continues to recognize, fund, and legitimize a Palestinian state project that fails to meet these same criteria.

   It lacks unified territorial control, effective governance, and a monopoly on force, yet is treated as inevitable and untouchable.

   This rewards dysfunction and perpetuates instability rather than encouraging responsible state-building.

   Israel’s move is not as a rejection of the two-state idea, but as a return to its original logic. Sovereignty should be earned through governance and accountability, not granted based on slogans, victimhood, or political pressure.

   By applying international law consistently and recognizing entities that actually govern, **Israel is challenging a system that sustains conflict by legitimizing failure and ignoring success.**

2. I agree that Israel is right to recognize Somaliland. But everything they say that is needed to reckognize a country they denied the Palestinians to have from the get go.

   Thus the argument one can read between the lines is spurious at best.

3. The argument is a little self-serving. I mean, sure Palestine lacks unified territorial control. But partly that’s because Israeli policy helps ensure that never happens. In any case, I agree that recognizing Somaliland does make a certain sort of sense. There’s risks to redrawing the map, but I also don’t think it’s fair to force people to be legally attached to failed states forever.

4. With that logic you could just destabilize states with covert and regular military attacks and they aren’t a state anymore.

   Ukraine isn’t a state as they don’t control what Dontesk rebels do?

5. I’m not saying there isn’t a lot of hypocrisy in the pro-palestinian camp.
   And I’m not saying there wasn’t some divergence from reality in many institutions.
   I am not even saying recognizing Somaliland was wrong.

   But Israeli analysts have a bit of a tendency to think they invented the wheel and the world revolves around them (I’m guilty of that myself):
   – Facts on the ground taking precedent over the dry letter of the law and it’s interpretation isn’t some new Israeli precedent but a first lecture in a 101 Pol-Sci course.
   – The significance of pointing out hypocrisies on the international stage is greatly overstated.
   – The reasons every country on the planet including the U.S. and China refused to recognize what was a de-facto independent state for decades in a sensitive strategic location has very little to do with Israel. I’m not even opposed to it, but it was a volatile move that could spiral out of control and there’s seem to be zero recognition of that in this article.
   – And while pushing hard for a 2ss is incredibly tone deaf atm, the reasons even countries freindly to Israel stick to it is that, facts on the ground wise, there are millions of Palestinians who aren’t going anywhere, that Israel would quite frankly rather nuke itself than consider as it’s own citizens.

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