Israeli foreign minister visits Somaliland, angering Somalia


Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar is on ​a visit to Somaliland in East Africa. 

(File/AFP)

Arab News
January 06, 2026

Saar said ‌that he had held talks “on the full range of relations” ‌with ⁠Somaliland’s ​president, Abdirahman ‌Mohamed Abdullahi, in the capital Hargeisa
Somalia’s foreign ministry said in ‌a statement that Saar’s visit amounted to “unacceptable interference” in its ‍internal affairs

MOGADISHU: Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar visited Somaliland on Tuesday on a trip that was denounced by Somalia, 10 days after Israel formally recognized the self-declared republic as an independent and sovereign state.

Israel is the only country that has formally recognized Somaliland’s move to break away from Somalia, which described Israel’s decision on recognition as an “unlawful step” and said Saar’s visit as a “serious violation” of its sovereignty.

In a statement on ‌X, Saar said ‌that he had held talks “on the full range of relations” ‌with ⁠Somaliland’s ​president, Abdirahman ‌Mohamed Abdullahi, in the capital Hargeisa.

“We are determined to vigorously advance relations between Israel and Somaliland,” Saar wrote on X, alongside images of him meeting the Somaliland leader at the presidential palace.

Somaliland’s information ministry earlier said on X that Saar was leading a high-level delegation. It gave no further details but a senior Somaliland official told Reuters before the meeting with the president that the Israeli foreign minister was expected to discuss ways to enhance bilateral ties.

Saar said Abdullahi had ⁠accepted an invitation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make an official visit to Israel.

Abdullahi said last month that Somaliland ‍would join the Abraham Accords, a deal brokered by Washington in 2020 that saw Gulf ‍states the UAE, a close partner of Somaliland, and Bahrain establish ties with Israel.

Somalia’s foreign ministry said in ‌a statement that Saar’s visit amounted to “unacceptable interference” in its ‍internal affairs.

It condemned “in the strongest terms the unauthorized incursion by the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs into Hargeisa,” stressing that the city is “an integral and inseparable part of the sovereign territory of the Federal Republic of Somalia.”

The ministry said the visit of Saar represented “a serious violation of Somalia’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political unity.”

Reaffirming its position on Somaliland, Mogadishu said Hargeisa forms an “inalienable part” of the internationally recognized territory of Somalia, adding that any official engagement conducted within Somali territory without the approval of the federal government is unlawful.

“Any official presence, contact, or engagement undertaken within Somali territory without the explicit consent and authorization of the Federal Government of Somalia is illegal, null, and void, and carries no legal validity or effect,” the statement said.

Somalia said such actions were inconsistent with international law, citing the United Nations Charter, the Constitutive Act of the African Union and established norms governing relations between states, including the principles of sovereign equality, territorial integrity, and non-interference.

The federal government called on Israel to “immediately cease all actions that undermine Somalia’s sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity,” and urged it to respect its obligations under international law.

It also appealed to the international community, including the UN, African Union, League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, to “reaffirm, in clear and unequivocal terms, their principled support for Somalia’s sovereignty, unity, and internationally recognized borders.”

While reiterating its commitment to peaceful international engagement, constructive diplomacy, and adherence to international law, Somalia warned that it “reserves the right to take all appropriate diplomatic and legal measures” to safeguard its sovereignty, national unity and territorial integrity.

Strategic location

Somaliland, once a British protectorate, has long sought formal recognition as an independent state although it has signed bilateral agreements with various governments on investments and security coordination.

Israel’s decision to recognize Somaliland follows two ​years of strained ties with many of its closest partners over the war in Gaza and policies in the West Bank.

Netanyahu has said Israel will pursue ⁠cooperation in agriculture, health, technology and the economy. Following his visit, Saar said “local professionals” from Somaliland’s water sector would visit Israel in the coming months for training.

Somaliland lies in northwestern Somalia, shares land borders with Ethiopia and Djibouti and sits across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, from where Iran-backed Houthis have launched missile and drones at Israel since October 2023, when the Gaza war began.

Omar Mahmood, a Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, said Israeli engagement was probably driven by Somaliland’s strategic location but that security coordination was possible without Israeli military installations there.

Saar said on Tuesday that mutual recognition and the establishment of diplomatic ties was not directed at anyone.

Somaliland has denied recognition allows for Israel to establish military bases there ‌or for the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza. Israel has advocated for what Israeli officials describe as voluntary Palestinian migration from Gaza.

* With Reuters

How Israel’s move in Somaliland fits in its broader strategy for regional dominance

Israel’s strategic posture favors a constant state of war over political deals that might constrain future aggression. Its recognition of Somaliland is part of this strategy, and an attempt to plant the first flag of its would-be empire in Africa.

By Abdaljawad Omar 

January 6, 2026 

MONDOWEISS

Israeli army tank deploys near the Gaza border, May 20, 2025. (Photo: © Saeed Qaq/ZUMA Press Wire/ZUMA Wire/APA Images)

As Donald Trump proclaimed a “forever peace” in the region last October, Israel proceeded to dramatically escalate its military operations, launching repeated assaults across Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and beyond. In Gaza, Israel has violated the ceasefire over a thousand times; in Lebanon, it continues to target resistance forces; in Syria, it attempts to destabilize the new regime, launches raids that kills dozens at a time, and tries to exacerbate sectarian divisions in the country; and more recently, it has continued to beat the drums of war with Iran. Its recent recognition of Somaliland also signals an Israel that seeks to regionalize its terror regime, challenge Turkey’s presence in Somalia, and position itself closer to Yemen and Iran for future skirmishes.

Some might consider this a failure of Israeli policy — that Israel is incapable of translating military success into a new political reality, that its war grinds on in a strange suspended animation while the political horizon remains frozen. Without such a political transition, the argument goes, military success remains transient: decisive in appearance, yet incapable of altering the structural conditions that generate and sustain resistance.


Israel views any fixed political agreement as a liability constraining its freedom of action. War is no longer an exceptional condition but a way of life, a normalized instrument of regional order.

There is some truth to this. But it also papers over something more important: Israel views any fixed political agreement as a liability, a diplomatic straitjacket constraining its freedom of action. Israel’s moves in Syria and Lebanon, alongside its broader regional realignments, point to an emerging strategic preference for a model of managed, perpetual conflict, rather than a stable political status quo that cannot be altered. War is no longer an exceptional condition but a way of life, a normalized instrument of regional order.

For now, this model is sustainable for Israel because its consequences are largely externalized: peripheral arenas and adversarial societies bear the brunt of the damage of its operations, while the Israeli home front remains relatively insulated from sustained disruption. The absence of a definitive political settlement is not a liability but a boon.

Perpetual war, so long as it remains geographically displaced and technologically mediated, allows Israel to defer the difficult work of political resolution while maintaining strategic initiative, leaving the door open for unilateral military action in the future.

The strategic logic of this model is reflected in two developments, respectively spatial and geopolitical in nature.

The first development is most immediately felt, with Israel expanding its buffer architectures in Syria, spatially dispersing resistance formations in south Lebanon, and continuously expanding its buffer zone within Gaza by bringing more parts of the Strip under its control.

These aren’t tactical adjustments, but long-term arrangements based on the logic of “security perimeters” and the preemptive management of threat horizons.

The other development is less visible but no less significant, represented in Israel’s entanglement in the byzantine geopolitics of states jockeying for influence across the region. There is the Saudi-Turkish-Qatari scramble to determine Syria’s future — each backing different factions, pursuing incompatible visions, yet united in their determination not to be left out of whatever arrangement eventually emerges from the rubble.

Meanwhile, Israel has been cultivating relationships with Greece and Cyprus, building up a network of eastern Mediterranean partnerships that look suspiciously like an attempt to outflank Turkey, with whom competition is becoming increasingly open.

It’s a messy business, and the alliances don’t follow any neat ideological lines. Yesterday’s enemy can become today’s tacit partner if the circumstances require it, with Israel dealing with the Saudis on some fronts while watching them bankroll projects elsewhere that run counter to their interests. The Israeli-Turkish relationship oscillates between functional cooperation on trade and energy and bitter rivalry on everything from gas exploration rights to influence in post-Assad Syria.

But even though Israeli actions suggest a growing comfort with inhabiting a permanently offensive posture in the region, its imperial entanglements also create new liabilities. Yes, Israel’s room for maneuver has been enlarged, but it has also been constrained — and not always in predictable ways — due, in part, to its relatively new relations with states such as the United Arab Emirates. More partners mean more options, to be sure, but they also entail more obligations and points at which things can unravel once the interests of the various actors inevitably diverge.

So the question isn’t whether Israel wields influence in the region (it plainly does), but whether this dense thicket of diplomatic activity constitutes a coherent strategy or a mere accumulation of tactical expedients whose long-term durability remains uncertain.

And then there’s Israel’s boldest move yet: its attempt to plant the first flag of its would-be empire in Africa.
Somaliland: the Horn of Africa gambit

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland on December 26, 2025, adds yet another layer to this already congested landscape, operating simultaneously across multiple vectors of competition: with Turkey over influence in the Horn of Africa, and against the ability of Yemen’s Ansar Allah (commonly known as “the Houthis”) to disrupt trade routes.

Turkey has maintained its largest overseas military base in Somalia since 2017. Camp TURKSOM in Mogadishu has trained some sixteen thousand troops and secured, in February 2024, the exclusive rights to train, equip, and modernize Somalia’s navy and patrol its exclusive economic zone. This consolidation of Turkish strategic presence transforms Somalia into something approaching a client state, not through direct annexation but through the patient accumulation of security, infrastructural, and economic dependence.

The Israeli move was framed explicitly as being “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords,” yet it functions equally as a counter to Turkish maritime ambitions and as a wedge into a region where Ankara has spent over a decade building institutional depth.

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland is not an isolated diplomatic gesture, but an attempt to secure a foothold in proximity to these competing networks. Somaliland’s coastline sits directly across from Yemen, offering monitoring and intervention capacity over Ansar Allah’s activities while simultaneously complicating Turkish ambitions in the region. What emerges is a field of overlapping projects: Turkish military infrastructure consolidating Somalia as a projection platform into the Red Sea; Iranian weapons flows moving through Somali territory to sustain Ansar Allah operations; and the Israeli recognition of Somaliland in an attempt to disrupt both.


The recognition of Somaliland appears minor but it reverberates across multiple strategic theaters at once — the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea shipping lanes, the Turkish sphere, the Emirati-Israeli alignment, and the broader axis of resistance.

The question is whether these entanglements represent calculated strategic depth or merely additional commitments that generate their own unforeseen vulnerabilities, binding each actor to the volatile fortunes of a region where clarity remains perpetually deferred, and alliances shift faster than the institutional arrangements meant to stabilize them.

What we are witnessing is not chaos but rather the return of classical balance-of-power politics. It is something far more familiar to students of European statecraft: a multipolar regional system where even ostensible allies pursue contradictory objectives, and where every gain by one actor automatically triggers compensatory maneuvers by others.

Consider the balance of forces. Turkey, a NATO member, builds military infrastructure in Somalia while competing with Israel — another American partner — for influence across the Horn and the eastern Mediterranean. The Saudis and Turks back opposing factions in Syria while both maintain channels to Washington. Israel cultivates Greece and Cyprus as counterweights to Turkey, yet all remain within the American security umbrella. This isn’t alliance breakdown — it is alliance complexity. The trouble is that it requires a kind of diplomatic sophistication that the current regional leadership often lacks.


More centrally, however — as with much of Israel’s regional conduct — this move is best understood as part of a broader preparation for future war.

The recognition of Somaliland is instructive precisely because it appears minor. On its own, it registers as a small diplomatic gesture; in practice, it reverberates across multiple strategic theaters at once — the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea shipping lanes, the Turkish sphere, the Emirati-Israeli alignment, and the broader axis of resistance. This is how power increasingly operates in a multipolar environment: not through singular, decisive moves, but through the cumulative positioning of nodes whose strategic value emerges relationally and in anticipation of the other’s actions.

More centrally, however — as with much of Israel’s regional conduct — this move is best understood as part of a broader preparation for future war. Perpetual war, here, isn’t an emergency condition to be avoided, but a governing paradigm to be managed, expanded, and spatially pre-configured long before war erupts again.
Regionalizing Israel’s strategy towards Palestine

Israel’s reorientation toward perpetual war is not unprecedented. States that enjoy overwhelming technological and military superiority often discover that victory is less useful than managed instability. An unresolved conflict preserves freedom of action, allowing borders to remain elastic, threats to be continuously redefined, and exceptional measures to become permanent. Israel’s conduct across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and now the Horn of Africa suggests a growing comfort with precisely this condition.

Seen in this light, the apparent failure to translate military dominance into political settlement begins to look less like an inability and more like a choice. Political closure would impose constraints: fixed borders, binding obligations, and reciprocal guarantees. Endless war, by contrast allows Israel to act preemptively, redraw security architectures, and embed its power into the geography of the region without having to negotiate or seek international ratification.

Israel is expanding territories under its control not to govern them, but to shape them for the purpose of absorbing shock. This strategy isn’t new to Israel when it comes to its relationship with the Palestinians, having for decades sustained a managed, perpetual war in the West Bank and Gaza that it has continuously modulated between alternating cycles of escalation and containment. The difference is that Israel is now moving to regionalize this model.


What’s new about this strategy isn’t its logic, but its scale, transplanting a decades-old strategy of managing its colonial frontier within Palestine to geographies far beyond it.

In other words, what’s new about this strategy isn’t its logic, but its scale, transplanting a decades-old strategy of managing its colonial frontier within Palestine to geographies far beyond it. Yet with this increase in scale, things get more complicated, giving the people of the region more reasons to resist.

As for the forces of resistance, it is precisely Israel’s refusal to entertain a political arrangement with them that keeps resistance alive. They have not been defeated because they can’t be so long as Israel’s only acceptable notion of defeat is total collapse or surrender. Certainly resistance won’t be defeated through Israel’s method of targeting the entire social and infrastructural body of what it declares to be “enemy societies.”

And the Israelis actually understand this better than they publicly admit: the buffer zones, the spatial fragmentation, the preemptive configurations — these are all tacit admissions that victory in any meaningful sense is unattainable.

What’s being managed and perhaps even perpetuated is the desire to sustain an intractable situation without any form of resolution. The resistance elements — whether Palestinian, Lebanese, or Yemeni — can certainly be weakened, perhaps even contained, but they can’t be eliminated entirely, because they’re embedded in political contexts that military force alone cannot address.


The regionalization of Israel’s regime of violence is generating an unintended strategic effect: the idea of a unified arena, encouraging coordination, resource-sharing, and political alignment among resistance forces.

At the same time, the regionalization of Israel’s regime of violence is generating an unintended strategic effect: by extending its operations across multiple theaters, it has renewed the salience of the idea of a unified arena, encouraging coordination, resource-sharing, and political alignment among resistance forces, including those that for long stretches viewed one another with suspicion.

It is true that, for now, many of these actors remain preoccupied with survival, political relevance, and the arduous work of rebuilding. Israel is determined to keep it that way, working to further fragment Syria, consolidate partnerships with Greece and Cyprus, deepen military cooperation with the Emirates across the Red Sea, operate in tandem with select Kurdish forces, and continue to bomb targets in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran.

Yet the longer Israel pursues this strategy of regional entanglement, the more it collapses once-discrete arenas into a single, interconnected field of confrontation.

In doing so, it pushes previously separated actors into closer proximity, lending renewed force to the idea of resistance not as a collection of isolated struggles, but as a set of interlinked campaigns increasingly compelled to operate in tandem.

Israel’s victoryless war is not an aberration, nor a failure of translation. It is the mature expression of a political order that can neither resolve resistance nor survive its resolution — and therefore reorganizes space, diplomacy, and force around the permanent modulation of war.

Abdaljawad Omar
Abdaljawad Omar is a writer and Assistant Professor at Birzeit University, Palestine. Follow him on X @HHamayel2

Analysis

How Israel's Somaliland gambit will reshape Red Sea geopolitics

Israel's recognition of Somaliland could redefine security calculations and redraw sensitive fault lines across the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea



Giorgio Cafiero
06 January, 2026
THE NEW ARAB

Late last year, Israel broke new diplomatic ground by becoming the first country to formally recognise the independence of Somaliland, a self-declared republic existing within Somalia’s internationally recognised territory.

Perched along the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden, extremely close to the strategically vital Bab al-Mandab strait, Somaliland has spent more than three decades seeking international legitimacy after declaring independence in 1991.

Tel Aviv’s decision marked a historic turning point for the breakaway state, conferring unprecedented recognition from a UN member and instantly transforming a long-frozen question of sovereignty into a matter of regional and global consequence.

Somaliland’s president, Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, welcomed the development as a “historic moment.” In a phone call with Abdullahi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Tel Aviv was recognising Somaliland’s “right of self-determination,” a step he argued would create “a great opportunity for expanding” Israel’s ties with the breakaway republic.

Israel has pledged to deepen its cooperation with Somaliland across a wide range of sectors, including agriculture, economics, health, and technology.

Nonetheless, officials in Somalia’s government in Mogadishu swiftly and forcefully condemned Israel’s decision. Analysts now warn that Tel Aviv’s recognition of Somaliland could reverberate within Somalia itself, aggravating long-standing political fault lines and inflaming tensions that remain far from resolved.

“Recognition of Somaliland is a highly sensitive issue both within Somaliland and across Somalia, seen by many as a further division of the Somali territories of the Horn of Africa,” Dr Nisar Majid, research director for the PeaceRep (Somalia) programme at the London School of Economics, told The New Arab. He also stressed that “no incumbent national president in Mogadishu wants to be known as having ‘lost’ Somaliland under his watch”.

Dr Majid told TNA that many Somalis see Tel Aviv’s recognition of Somaliland as a “precursor” to more countries making that same decision, which could risk “damaging a spirit of reconciliation that has re-emerged regularly over the past two decades, and which will play into the hands of anti-federalists and centralists who advocate for a centralised state”.

He further cautioned that the move is likely to sharpen internal divisions within Somaliland, particularly in the eastern region of Sanaag and the western region of Awdal.

In response, both Djibouti and the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) may feel compelled to step up political and material support for unionist areas, while deliberately distancing themselves from the separatist leadership in Hargeisa.

According to Dr Majid, such dynamics carry a serious risk of sparking armed conflict within Somaliland itself. At the same time, he noted, Puntland and Jubbaland are likely to exploit the situation to intensify pressure on the president of FGS.

Beyond Somalia’s borders, Israel’s recognition of the semi-desert territory in the Horn of Africa has sparked widespread controversy. Many governments, particularly across the Arab and Islamic world, fear that a formalised Israel-Somaliland relationship could carry far-reaching repercussions that extend well beyond the realm of diplomacy.

Israel's decision has instantly transformed a long-frozen question of sovereignty into a matter of regional and global consequence. [Getty]

Several months ago, multiple news outlets reported that Israel had approached Somaliland about the potential resettlement of Palestinians forcibly displaced from Gaza. Israel declined to comment on these reports, while Somaliland insisted that any Israeli decision to recognise its independence would be entirely unrelated to the Palestinian issue.

Nevertheless, both Somalia and the Palestinian Authority have suggested that Tel Aviv’s recognition of Somaliland could be linked to a broader plan to displace Palestinians.

Speaking to his parliament, Somalia’s president categorically rejected this possibility, declaring, “Somalia will never accept the people of Palestine to be forcibly evicted from their rightful land to a faraway place”.

Strategic flashpoint: Somaliland and the Horn of Africa

Somaliland’s largest port, located in Berbera, also features an extensive runway, making it a strategically significant hub in the region. For years, officials in the breakaway statelet have leveraged these facilities to cultivate closer ties with foreign powers.

Recent speculation suggests that Israel may seek to establish a military presence in Somaliland, although Hargeisa - the capital and largest city of the self-declared republic - has maintained that no such plans are underway.

States across the broader region swiftly condemned Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, each citing reasons tied to their own national interests.

Highlighting the range of motivations behind this opposition, Dr Michael Woldemariam, associate professor and PhD program director at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, noted that there are two main strategic inclinations that most of these countries share.

First is a “serious discomfort with growing power and influence of what might be considered a UAE-Israeli axis in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden”, and second is a “general desire to avoid the crack-up of existing state boundaries in the region,” he told TNA.

Turkey's strategic response and regional stakes

On 30 December 2025, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used strong language to condemn Israel’s “illegitimate and unacceptable” recognition of Somaliland. That same day, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud joined Erdogan in Ankara for a joint news conference, where he warned that the Israeli recognition could “add more layers of instability to the Horn of Africa.” Erdogan also announced that Turkey plans to deploy a deep-sea energy drilling vessel to Somalia’s coast next month.

In the past, Ankara has acted as a mediator between Mogadishu and Hargeisa, while also investing in Somalia by developing a range of economic interests and supporting the country’s security forces.

From the perspective of Turkish authorities, Israeli recognition of Somaliland poses a threat to these economic stakes and represents a serious challenge to the national sovereignty of Somalia.

Israel's diplomatic move is a catalyst that risks reshaping political alignments, security calculations, and fault lines across the Horn of Africa and the wider Red Sea arena. [Getty]
Egypt's opposition and Iran's concerns

Having condemned Israel for unilaterally recognising Somaliland in violation of international law and the UN Charter, Egypt described Tel Aviv’s move as a threat to regional and global peace.

In recent years, Cairo has clashed with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), heightening the strategic importance of its relationship with Somalia. The security pact signed between Cairo and Mogadishu in 2024 underscores this dynamic. Understandably, Egypt views a strong, unified Somalia as crucial to its efforts to counterbalance Addis Ababa.


Iran also quickly voiced its opposition to Israel’s Somaliland recognition. “Recognition of a part of an independent country by an illegitimate regime is aimed at fragmenting Islamic countries, weakening the region, and making it more vulnerable to Israeli ambitions and aggression,” declared Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei.

Tehran’s reaction came as little surprise, given the Islamic Republic’s deep concerns over the possibility of an Israeli presence near the Bab al-Mandab, from which it could threaten Yemen’s Houthi rebels - currently Iran’s most powerful ally in the “Axis of Resistance” following the events of 2024, which entailed Lebanon’s Hezbollah suffering major blows in its conflict with Israel.

Simply put, Iran views any Israeli military foothold within Somalia’s UN-recognised borders as a significant challenge to its strategic interests across the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden.

Noting that the Houthis’ geographic distance from Israel provided Ansar Allah an advantage during direct hostilities with the country following 7 October 2023, Dr Stig Jarle Hansen, professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, told TNA that an Israeli military base in Somaliland would be a “strategic challenge” and a “nightmare” for the Houthis.

In response, the Houthis threatened that any Israeli presence in the territory would be a “target”.
The Gulf reacts: Unity, solidarity, and strategic calculations

Members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) voiced strong opposition to Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, primarily viewing the move as destabilising, a violation of Somalia’s sovereignty, and a threat to regional stability.

On 4 January, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan met with his Somali counterpart, Abdisalam Abdi Ali, in Riyadh, where Saudi Arabia’s chief diplomat “reaffirmed the Kingdom’s full support for the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Somalia and the unity and territorial integrity of its land, rejecting anything that undermines Somalia’s security and stability”.

Senior officials from other GCC states echoed this stance, expressing solidarity with Mogadishu in similarly firm terms.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) remains a key actor to watch in this unfolding situation. Abu Dhabi did not officially denounce Israel’s diplomatic recognition of Somaliland; it has a longstanding record of political, economic, and strategic support for the breakaway republic - albeit without formally recognising its independence.

Through extensive commercial and investment activities in Berbera, the UAE has become a major player in Somaliland, a presence that has heightened tensions with Mogadishu, where the FGS views Abu Dhabi’s involvement as a challenge to the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

“We have not yet seen direct evidence of the UAE's involvement in Israel's recognition of Somaliland, but I think there is a clear convergence of interests between the two sides on this issue. Going forward, I would expect Abu Dhabi and the Israelis to coordinate (often covertly) their support for Somaliland,” Dr Woldemariam told TNA.

“For the UAE, the perception of a stronger and recognised Somaliland fits into its Red Sea strategy, as the Southern Transitional Council’s push for a Southern state in Yemen. In the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, the UAE and Israel's strategies continue to converge, driven by maritime security and counter-smuggling,” said Eleonora Ardemagni, a senior associate research fellow at the Milan-based Institute for International Political Studies, in a TNA interview.

“These strategies look increasingly opposed to those of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which instead advocate for the same regional security goals, but pursued through the status quo in both Somalia and Yemen,” she added.

Dr Hansen expects the UAE to act cautiously in order to “keep a low profile,” particularly given existing tensions with Saudi Arabia over Yemen, which could intensify if Abu Dhabi is increasingly perceived as closely aligned with Israel in supporting Somaliland.

As he explained to TNA, the UAE is in a “tough spot,” and officials in Abu Dhabi “don’t want to signal too much support for Somaliland because it’s too costly because of the wider Arab world”.

There is growing alarm over the power and influence of what might be considered a UAE-Israeli axis in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. [Getty]

Reshaping fault lines

Ultimately, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland represents far more than a bilateral diplomatic breakthrough between Tel Aviv and Hargeisa. It is a catalyst that risks reshaping political alignments, security calculations, and fault lines across the Horn of Africa and the wider Red Sea arena.

For Somaliland, Israeli recognition offers long-sought validation and the promise of deeper economic and strategic partnerships. Yet, it also exposes the fragility of internal cohesion and heightens the danger of regional proxy competition playing out on its soil.

For the FGS, the move is perceived as a direct challenge to the country’s sovereignty, one that could undermine already delicate reconciliation efforts and intensify rivalries among federal states and neighbouring actors.

Regionally, Israel’s decision intersects with broader contests involving Gulf powers, Turkey, Egypt, and Iran, each seeking to safeguard their interests in one of the world’s most strategically vital maritime corridors.

As concerns mount over militarisation, forced population transfers, and the erosion of established borders, Somaliland’s recognition has become a litmus test for competing visions of order versus fragmentation of states in the neighbourhood.

Exactly how this development will play out in terms of the regional security architecture and geopolitical balance has yet to be realised. Nonetheless, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland has further internationalised a long-frozen dispute, and the consequences may reverberate far beyond Somalia’s UN-recognised borders for many years to come.


Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics

Follow him on X: @GiorgioCafiero

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

UK Palestine Action detainee pauses hunger strike as others continue

A UK pro-Gaza activist has paused a 59-day hunger strike after some demands were met, while three other detainees continue fasting over bail and a fair trial.

The New Arab Staff
06 January, 2026

A UK pro-Gaza activist paused her hunger strike after 59 days, as three other detainees continue fasting in protest over bail and fair trial concerns [Getty]

UK pro-Palestine activist Teuta "T" Hoxha has paused her hunger strike on Saturday evening after almost two months of fasting, as three other hunger strikers continue their protest demanding bail and the right to a fair trial.

Hoxha, who was imprisoned in connection with a Palestine Action protest at Elbit Systems' research centre in Filton, ended her strike after 59 days after prison authorities agreed to meet some of her demands, according to Prisoners4Palestine (P4P).

Those demands included the delivery of a backlog of mail that had allegedly been withheld for up to six months, a written apology for the delay, and confirmation of a visit with a member of the Joint Extremism Unit (JEXU) to discuss her individual prison conditions. The JEXU deals with extremism-related cases within the prison system.

Despite pausing her hunger strike, Hoxha’s health remains a concern. P4P saidon Monday that she remains in prison without what it described as adequate medical care, despite repeatedly requesting to be transferred to hospital.

The organisation alleged that HMP Peterborough has refused to send Hoxha to hospital, despite concerns that she is unable to eat safely and is at risk of refeeding syndrome, a potentially life-threatening condition that can occur when food is reintroduced after prolonged fasting without medical supervision.


P4P said the situation echoes an earlier case involving hunger striker Qesser Zuhrah, who has since ended her strike, after HMP Bronzefield reportedly refused to call an ambulance to transfer her to hospital in December.

The organisation said that despite the increasingly serious health risks facing the hunger strikers, including the possibility of organ failure, paralysis, brain damage and death, the British government has yet to meet with the prisoners or their representatives.

Three hunger strikers remain. Heba Muraisi, now on day 65 and the longest-serving striker, is reportedly experiencing uncontrollable muscle spasms and breathing difficulties. She is demanding to be transferred back from HMP New Hall to HMP Bronzefield after being moved miles away from her family earlier this year.

Kamran Ahmed, now on day 58 of his hunger strike, has been hospitalised five times. P4P said he was double-cuffed throughout his hospital stays, while medical staff reportedly struggled to insert a cannula because prolonged fasting has caused his veins to shrink and become difficult to access.

Lewie Chiaramello, who has been on hunger strike for 44 days, is being held at HMP Bristol. P4P alleged that prison staff are withholding his diabetes medication and preventing him from accessing his diabetes reader or insulin during visits and while being moved to and from his cell.

Eight members of Palestine Action have been on hunger strike since October after being arrested and charged in connection with break-ins at Elbit Systems facilities and a Royal Air Force facility in 2024.

Opinion

2025 saw the most significant political shift toward Palestinian rights in U.S. history

In 2025, there was notable momentum in both the Democratic and Republican parties toward substantive change in U.S. policy on Palestine.

By Mitchell Plitnick 

 December 31, 2025 
MONDOWEISS

 Pro-Palestine protesters march in Washington, DC to call for a ceasefire and end the genocide in Gaza in January 2024. (Photo: Eman Mohammed)


2025 started with a Gaza ceasefire that was never meant to be sustained and is ending with one that was never actually instituted. The year also saw a steady intensification of the occupation on the West Bank, and an unprecedentedly broad wave of Israeli warfare all across the Middle East.

In the United States, the transition from the passionate and self-defeating support for Israel of Joe Biden to the transactional but nonetheless still solid support for Israel of Donald Trump had negligible effect on the superpower policy that is one of the greatest obstacles to the realization of inalienable Palestinian rights.

But there is real hope we might take this year from a significant movement in the American discourse on Palestine and Israel and that this shift is finally starting to be reflected in American politics, albeit in ways far too small to match the needs of the moment.

Most notably, 2025 saw American public opinion continue its shift away from Israel.

In July, an article in The Economist, hardly a progressive publication, noted that,


“Israel’s rightward political shift in recent years, and especially the protracted war in Gaza, has alienated many ordinary Americans. The disquiet about Israel that has been building for some time within the Democratic Party is now growing among Republicans, too. Younger members of both parties have shifted especially dramatically. A fundamental reshaping of one of America’s deepest friendships seems all but inevitable, with huge ramifications for the Middle East and the world.”

Even the most stalwart of Israel supporters found that the political winds had shifted enough that they were forced to criticize Israel’s behavior at least implicitly. Rep. Ritchie Torres, who has made his career as an extreme opponent of Palestinian rights could not withstand the outcry from his New York City constituents at witnessing Israel’s deliberate starvation of the people in Gaza over the summer of 2025. He wrote on X, “The free world has a moral responsibility to Palestinians in distress. Flood Gaza with food.”

Torres’ implication that Israel was not allowing enough food into Gaza (at that point, they were barely allowing any, and Gaza was in a state of famine) was shocking for him. But more importantly it reflected the growing distaste for Israel among Democrats.

Nothing convinces Democrats more than polls, and many polls were showing that their constituents were growing increasingly fed up with Israel.

When Israel began its genocide in Gaza after the attack of October 7, 2023, Americans were split on Israel’s response. A Gallup Poll showed 50% of Americans approved of Israel’s actions, with 45% opposed. That number quickly changed to disapproval, but in 2025, it veered sharply, and by mid-July, 60% of Americans disapproved of Israel’s actions and only 32% approved.

The numbers were even starker for Democrats. While 36% approved of Israel’s initial response, only 8% did by July 2025.

But the shift isn’t only apparent among Democrats. While Republicans are still much more supportive of Israel than Democrats, that support is beginning to ebb, especially among younger Republicans.

Pollster Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, conducted a poll in August 2025 and found that 21% of Republicans said that U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies were “too pro-Israel.”

“The change taking place among young Republicans is breathtaking,” Telhami said. “While 52% of older republicans (35+) sympathize more with Israel, only 24% of younger Republicans (18-34) say the same — fewer than half.”
Public opinion is finally impacting politicians

In November of 2024, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a Joint Resolution of Disapproval (JRAD) to stop a large sale of arms to Israel. The measure failed, but 18 senators voted to support Sanders’ resolution.

Such a vote might not have even reached the Senate floor in the past, and a bill like this one would have been lucky to get any support at all. As Jewish Voice for Peace Action’s Political Director Beth Miller put it at the time, “This is too little too late; this genocide has been going on for 13 months, but that does not change the fact that this is a critically important step.”

That vote was also significant because some of the Democrats who supported Sanders were not those one might suspect. For instance, Hillary Clinton’s former running mate, Tim Kaine of Virginia, was among those who supported the Sanders bill.

Despite the failure, Sanders tried again in July 2025. This time, his JRAD got 24 votes in support, a 33% increase. Like the 2024 vote, this still doesn’t speak well of the Senate, Congress, or even the Democrats as a whole. This vote centered on a 22-month-long genocide at that point. But, as Miller had said before, the increase mattered, and it mattered that more moderate Democrats, such as Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, joined in.

These votes, though defeats, are a huge political turning point, even though they failed to save any Palestinian lives. Israel was perceived to be involved in “war,” as unsuitable as that term might be to those of us observing what was happening at the time. And this was not a question of aid to Israel, but weapons sales. The idea of voting against arms to Israel under any circumstances, let alone a sale during perceived wartime, was an absurdity in the past. It was political suicide for all but a few politicians, and it could never have gotten more than a vote or two in support.

Even a few years ago, just whispering about conditioning aid to Israel was considered a dangerous and controversial step. In 2025, more than half of the 47 Democratic caucus members in the Senate voted to block an arms sale to Israel. Political trends can take time to shift, especially when they are supported by powerful political forces and have been entrenched for decades. This is what change looks like.

It was a remarkable turnaround, and as efforts to change American policy on Palestine continue and intensify, there is every reason to believe it is a trend that will persist.
The base of both parties are splitting over Israel

2025 saw significant momentum build in both parties for substantive change in American policy toward Palestine.

As time passed after Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election and gave the world a new, more unbalanced, and more authoritarian Donald Trump in the White House, it became clearer and clearer that Joe Biden’s and Harris’ policy toward Palestine was a key factor in alienating potential Democratic voters and thus costing her the election.

Just before Trump was sworn in, a poll from the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) and YouGov found that the top issue that caused former Biden voters to change or withhold their votes in 2024 was Gaza.

It turned out, in fact, that this was particularly true in battleground states, demonstrating that the famously poll- and focus-group-driven Democrats had either completely misread or disregarded the ideological map in the states they most needed to win.

In December, the Democrats decided to bury a post-mortem report they had commissioned on the 2024 election. They didn’t offer much of an explanation, just some word salad about needing to look forward, not back, which anyone could easily see was a naked evasion.

No doubt, there were many reasons the Democrats found for their loss that were embarrassing and reflected their own political short-sightedness and tunnel vision. But virtually every serious analysis of the loss listed not only Gaza as a key factor, but also issues tangential to Gaza, such as a sense of disconnection between candidates and the base, and the loss of young voters. Both of those problems are reflective of Democrats’ failure to heed the base on Gaza.

Republicans, meanwhile, have seen a growing chasm in their ranks. The split is coming between traditional Republican voters and more isolationist, “America First” voters.

Part of that split has played out in public in ugly ways. There is a faction of former Trump acolytes, such as Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Candace Owens who, to varying degrees, are using Palestine to channel hatred of Jews and disguise it as suddenly discovering the suffering of Palestinians. Owens, in particular, has been very open about using classic anti-Jewish tropes and outright expressions of Jew-hatred to advance her case. In her case, her open bigotry has superseded her initial attempts to connect her hate to the Palestinian cause. Carlson and Greene—both of whom have long histories of Judeophobia as well as Islamophobia, and anti-Arab racism—have not repudiated any of their earlier statements but have clung to anti-Israel statements in the current moment, rather than recalling their earlier anti-Jewish ones.

But that surface fight masks a more important development, which is the growing disillusionment of young Republicans with Israel.

In another, recent IMEU/YouGov poll, 51% of young Republicans said they would prefer to support candidates who would reduce the amount of aid we give Israel. 53% say we should not renew the annual aid commitment to Israel, and 51% oppose the idea of a 20-year enhanced agreement of the type Israel is said to be seeking now.

Some of that is surely rooted in the Jew-hate of figures like Candace Owens and the self-proclaimed neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. But there is certainly more to it than that. Much of the rock-solid support of Republicans for Israel is based on various forms of Christian Zionism, particularly the dispensationalist belief in the role the Jewish return to the Land of Israel plays in the coming of the end times and the Rapture. But evangelicals have never been monolithic in that belief, contrary to public perception, and more of them are moving away from supporting Israel.

As Palestinian-American, evangelical pastor Fares Abraham put it in February of 2025, “A significant generational shift is underway away from a false gospel of empire toward a faith that upholds justice, mercy and truth. Many young Christians recognize that true faithfulness to Christ cannot be reconciled with the destruction of Palestinian lives, the bombing of churches, hospitals and refugee camps or the systematic starvation of an entire population.

This is a trend that has been visible for some time. It comes together with a rise in isolationism among Republicans, an isolationism that was evident even in the carefully chosen words of Vice President JD Vance at the recent Turning Point USA conference.

Vance said, “99% of Republicans, and I think probably 97% of Democrats, do not hate Jewish people for being Jewish. What is actually happening is that there is a real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy.”

That was pretty remarkable for a sitting vice president of either party, regardless of what they might really think.

So, while it was a year of ongoing tragedy and of a familiar helplessness for people who want to end the suffering of the people in Palestine, it was also a year that saw unprecedented progress in the U.S. toward eliminating the support Israel gets for its merciless policies and actions toward the Palestinian people.

That matters. Nothing powers Israel’s apartheid and genocide like the U.S. does. It’s not easy to change American policy that has been entrenched over the course of decades, but the day of that change is finally drawing closer. 2025 provided not just reason for hope but the potential to energize the forces of change for years to come.

This is how Israeli settlers, backed by the military, erased a Palestinian village from existence last week

The last family in the Palestinian village of Yanoun left their home last week, joining a growing list of communities that have been erased from existence through the establishment of Israeli "shepherding outposts" in their place.

By Majd Jawad 

 January 4, 2026 

MONDOWEISS

A general view of Yanoun school, September 15, 2015. (Photo: Nedal Eshtayah/APA Images)


My last visit to the village of Yanoun was about two years ago, when I reported on the only school that remained in the beleaguered hamlet in the northern occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers and the army had been continuously harassing the residents of the Palestinian village in an attempt to force them to leave.

“Look closely at the village and examine it carefully,” a local representative, Rashid Murrar, told me at the time. “You may not see it next time.”

He was right. Khirbet Yanoun, a small rural Hamlet southeast of Nablus known for its agricultural production, no longer exists.

On the morning of Sunday, December 28, 2025, Israeli military authorities issued a sudden warning: all residents of Yanoun had to evacuate by 4 p.m.

Murrar packed all his belongings by evening, leaving Khirbet Yanoun with his family. Once home to dozens of families, the village stood completely empty of its residents for the first time in decades.

Murrar’s family had been the last to stand their ground in the village in the face of relentless settlement expansion. Since the late 1990s, when Israeli settlements and their associated outposts began encircling Yanoun, there have been hundreds of attempts to empty it of its inhabitants.

Yet no image of that slow process of displacement has rivalled the scene that unfolded in Yanoun last week, with roads, homes, and fields left silent.

This is the story of how yet another rural Palestinian community has been ethnically cleansed by Israeli settlers and the Israeli army, joining the growing list of Palestinian communities in the West Bank countryside that have been erased from existence.
A life like hell

Yanoun’s ordeal began between 1996 and 1999, with the establishment of the Israeli settlement of Itamar and a series of surrounding outposts, including Giv’ot Olam and Givat Arnon (also known as Hill 777). Over time, these settlements tightened their grip around the hamlet, restricting movement, access to land, and daily life.

Nearly twenty families were displaced from Yanoun in the years that followed, many after repeated settler attacks. By 2002, the remaining families were forced to leave the hamlet entirely for nearly a year, relocating to the nearby town of Aqraba, where they stayed with relatives or rented small apartments.

Rashid Murrar describes the attacks as relentless and calculated. “They came with dogs and guns. They beat residents,” he said. “They told us they didn’t want to see anyone here the following week, and that we should move to Aqraba.”

In 2005, following pressure from humanitarian organizations and international activists who accompanied them, the residents of Yanoun returned to their homes. But the violence never stopped, intensifying more in recent months.

Masked settlers regularly entered the hamlet, residents said, beating people, throwing stones, vandalizing crops, emptying water tanks, and stealing sheep. “Life became unbearable,” Murrar recalled. “It turned into hell.”

“We tried to stay in the village until our very last breath, but in the end, we were besieged inside our homes,” he said. “The army prevented anyone from outside the hamlet from dealing with us, selling to us, or buying from us. Our livelihood and our food were under siege.”

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad arrives to pay a visit to support Palestinian farmers in the village Yanoun, April 5, 2012. (Photo: Mustafa Abu Dayah/APA Images)

Today, Israeli settlers often take over Palestinian land in the West Bank’s countryside by establishing what are known as shepherding outposts — illegal settler outposts that are set up on Palestinian land for the purpose of grazing livestock, usually as a prelude to more violent forms of harassment and intimidation. Yanoun is one of the earliest testing grounds for this rural colonization strategy, according to local historian and social researcher Hamza Aqrabawi in an interview with al-Quds al-Arabi on December 29, 2025.

Aqrabawi told al-Quds al-Arabi that a settler by the name of Avraham Avri Ran established a shepherding outpost near Yanoun in the mid-1990s, which served as a gathering point for settler gangs and later formed the nucleus of what would become known as the Hilltop Youth movement.

The outpost established by Ran, now known as Giv’ot Olam, played a central role in launching organized attacks against Yanoun and surrounding communities, cementing Ran’s position as one of the movement’s key ideological figures.

In the years that followed, settler attacks on Yanoun residents continued intermittently, with the first lynching attack taking place in 1996 and causing an old man to completely lose his hearing. Recent years, however, have seen a significant escalation both in frequency and severity.

According to Aqraba’s mayor, the municipality, which administratively oversees Yanoun, has documented approximately 273 settler attacks over the past two years. Alongside the continued confiscation of Yanoun’s remaining lands, which do not exceed 3,500 dunams (350 hectares). This comes after nearly 80% of the hamlet’s land has already been gradually seized by the Israeli authorities, which either designated it as a closed military zone or allotted it to settlement expansion outright.

The municipality attempted to support residents’ abilities to remain by exempting them from electricity and water fees, in addition to other services. Appeals were also made to international organizations to fund agricultural and service projects.

“But under occupation, we cannot provide security,” Aqraba’s mayor said. “We appealed to several international bodies to provide agricultural and service projects for the hamlet, but we cannot provide them with security protection under occupation.”

In an effort to support residents’ steadfastness, villagers renovated an old house in the year 2000 to serve as a school. The building was no larger than 150 square meters and consisted of only three rooms.

Since the Israeli occupation prohibited expanding the school or even undertaking basic repairs, the villagers completed the roof with corrugated steel sheets, a measure intended to prevent demolition.

The school served about 20 students from the hamlet. For these children, the journey to education was not simply a walk to class; the distance to surrounding schools was long, and the route was fraught with obstacles, including soldiers at checkpoints, searches along the road, and the constant presence of military vehicles.

Salah al-Din Jaber, head of the Aqraba municipality, explained that “students are subjected to searches by soldiers and checkpoints on their way to and from school.”

By late December 2025, Yanoun School was effectively closed. Students and teachers stopped attending classes after escalating settler threats and continuous attacks made the continuation of education unsafe.

“Settlers set up checkpoints at the entrances to the hamlet, making it difficult for teachers to reach it,” Jaber said. “This led to its closure.”

The closure of the school was not simply a disruption of learning. It was a final sign that the community’s social fabric had been irreparably damaged.
Land, water, and survival

Yanoun was more than a cluster of houses. It was an agricultural area whose fertile terrain had served as the foundation of local life for decades.

Locals tell Mondoweiss that fields of wheat, barley, and lentils once spread across Yanoun’s slopes, while ancient olive trees, some more than a hundred years old, made up a significant portion of the village’s subsistence.

At the entrance of the village lies Ain Yanoun — the local spring from which the hamlet gets its name and which is distinguished by a stone structure that collects spring water flowing from the north.

Many residents prefer the name “Ain Yanoun” over the Arabic designation khirbeh, which is often translated into English as “ruins,” arguing that the term implies abandonment. They insist that Yanoun has never been abandoned; its olive trees tell much of that story.

Yet this agricultural importance made the community a target. Israeli policies increasingly cut off Palestinians from their land, imposed restrictions on cultivation, and used rural outposts as cover for what many Palestinians see as de facto land annexation.

In 2006, residents petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to regain access to their farmland. The court ruled that denying farmers access under the pretext of protection was disproportionate, allowing them to return under complex security arrangements, which never truly protected them.

Yanoun’s fate mirrors that of dozens of Palestinian villages surrounding Itamar and its expansion corridors. These communities are targeted through a combination of land confiscation, settlement outposts planted near homes, military checkpoints, and severe restrictions on farming and grazing.

“Every olive tree that cannot be harvested is another step toward emptying a village of its people,” community activist Ayham Abu Bakr told Mondoweiss. “Yanoun has long been a living example of this strategy.”

“The goal is gradual surrender,” he added. “To exhaust people until the land is empty of its owners.”

Today, Yanoun is empty. But its story has not ended.

“We were forced to leave once, then we returned,” Murrar says. “Now I live in an old house that I consider temporary. My wife lives far away in Aqraba. We will have to reunite there very soon.”

Yanoun did not disappear overnight. It was erased slowly — piece by piece.

The West Bank settlements Israel evacuated in 2005 are back

Israel has begun rebuilding the four settlements that it evacuated in the northern West Bank in 2005. Settlers and the army are trying to expel Palestinian already living in the area by making the land "impossible to live on," residents say.

By Majd Jawad 

January 5, 2026

MONDOWEISS

Israeli settlers return to the illegal Israeli outpost of Homesh, December 23, 2021. (Photo: Wajed Nobani/APA Images)


Muhammad Jaradat would never have imagined that 2025 would be the last year he got to visit the hills of the northern West Bank with his hiking group.

“We returned once or twice every year, amazed by the beauty of carob and oak trees,” he said in a quiet grief.

Jaradat, the founder of the Jenin-based Tijawal wa Tirhal group, says that his hiking companions took it upon themselves to tour the rolling plains and forests that dotted the landscape stretching around Jenin. “Our first hike was in the lands of Umm al-Tout nearly 13 years ago,” he told Mondoweiss. “We also used to roam the lands of Jenin, Sanur, and Raba.”

“We don’t hike for leisure alone,” Jaradat said. “We hike to assert our right to these hills. Every carob tree has a name. Every ridge carries a story.”

The areas Jaradat and his group visited used to be illegally occupied by the four Israeli settlements of Ganim, Kadim, Homesh, and Sa-Nur, before Israel unilaterally evacuated them in 2005 following the passing of what was known as the Disengagement Law.


In June, Israel announced plans to build 22 new settlements, including where Sa-Nur and Homesh used to be. The objective is part of Israel’s broader vision to annex large parts of the West Bank.

But these settlements are back, and access to the Palestinian lands around them has been progressively restricted by Israeli authorities ever since 2023, when Israel’s Knesset began the process of re-legalizing the settlements through successive amendments to the 2005 Disengagement Law.

Since then, the Israeli government has retroactively legalized 19 settlement outposts across the West Bank, including the four evacuated settlements in the north. In legal terms, Israel effectively reversed the Disengagement Law after revoking it altogether in July 2024. A year later, Israel announced plans to build 22 new settlements in June, including where Sa-Nur and Homesh used to be.

The objective of this push is part of Israel’s broader vision to annex large parts of the West Bank after forcing its residents off their lands. It plans to do so by making life unbearable for Palestinians in areas targeted for resettlement — until they “voluntarily” leave.
Sanur and Homesh: the hills watching over Nablus and Jenin

The Palestinian village of Sanur, located atop Tal al-Tarsala, has long held strategic significance for the Israeli military. Sitting on elevated terrain in the northern West Bank, it overlooks key routes connecting Jenin and Nablus. The nearby former Israeli settlement of Sa-Nur, which took the name of the Palestinian village, previously benefited from the presence of a major military base that used to control large swathes of the region before the 2005 disengagement.

Following the Israeli government’s most recent decision to re-settle the area, a military platoon has been deployed to the area around Sanur, in preparation for establishing a permanent military base and facilitating the return of settler families.

The move is part of a broader plan to relocate the headquarters of the Menashe Brigade, the Israeli military unit responsible for the northern West Bank, from inside Israel to the occupied territory.

Another part of the preparations involves building the so-called “Silat Bypass,” a road being funded by the Israeli Finance Ministry with roughly 20 million shekels, under the leadership of the Religious Zionism Party’s Bezalel Smotrich.

Last week, Smotrich announced that plans are in motion to build 126 new settlement units as part of the resurrected Sa-Nur colony, describing the move as a “correction of a historical injustice” and “the implementation of a Zionist vision on the ground.” He emphasized that the return to Sa-Nur would not come through slogans, but through “plans, budgets, roads, and concrete steps.”

Another settlement slated for revival is Homesh, established on lands belonging to the Palestinian villages of Burqa, Silat al-Dhahr, and Bazariya. Homesh occupies a similarly strategic hilltop between Jenin and Nablus, and its evacuation in 2005 was fiercely opposed by settlers. Ever since, the site has remained a persistent flashpoint between Palestinians and settlers, often backed by the military.

But today, confrontation with settlers is no longer necessary for Palestinians nearby to feel threatened; simply approaching their farmland is often enough to prompt the arrival of Israeli soldiers.


“They don’t need to expel us all at once. They just make the land impossible to live on.”Palestinian resident from Burqa

Over recent years, residents of Burqa, Silat al-Dhahr, and Bazariya have documented dozens of incidents in which farmers and shepherds were subjected to verbal and physical attacks.

Ahmad Abu Fahd, a farmer from Silat al-Dhahr, says that access to his land has been heavily restricted in recent years. “Every morning we ask ourselves the same question: will we be allowed to reach our land today, or will the settlers block us again?” he says while scanning the hills overlooking his fields. “Since Homesh returned, every step toward our lands has become a gamble. Sometimes they come with army protection. Sometimes they chase us, throw stones, and force us to leave empty-handed.”

For communities surrounding Homesh, the threat extends beyond physical injury or crop damage. The unpredictability itself — never knowing when land will be accessible, when soldiers will appear, or when violence will erupt — has become a tool of domination.

“They don’t need to expel us all at once,” one resident who preferred to remain anonymous told Mondoweiss. “They just make the land impossible to live on.”

A Palestinian shepherd herds sheep at a field in the West Bank village of Sanur near Jenin, November 9, 2018. (Photo: Shadi Jarar’ah/APA Images)

Kadim and Ganim: Jenin’s exposed flank

In mid-December, residents of Jenin were startled by bright lights glowing atop the hills of Ganim and Kadim. These were not the temporary encampments settlers had occasionally erected before, but organized celebrations by settler groups marking Jewish religious holidays and openly calling for a renewed Jewish presence there.

The event came only days after Israel’s decision to allow a return to the site, signaling the first step toward re-establishing control over two settlements located just hundreds of meters from Palestinian homes in Jenin’s eastern neighborhoods.

Over the past several weeks, the Jenin area and other parts of the northern West Bank have been subjected to a wide-ranging Israeli military operation aimed at creating a “new security reality” in the area that would allow for the reestablishment of the evacuated settlements. The military campaign drew international condemnation after a particular incident in which Israeli soldiers were caught on camera executing two Palestinian men in Jenin after they had surrendered to the army.

Before 2005, Ganim and Kadim settlements were founded with a combined security-agricultural character, and later gradually evolved into permanent residential communities housing religious-nationalist settler families. The Israeli army provided protection and essential infrastructure, roads, electricity, and water, helping entrench settlement presence as a fact on the ground.

Before the decision to disengage, Palestinian residents of the area recall that military activity in and around these hilltops frequently preceded incursions into Jenin. For them, the settlements were never merely civilian sites, but places where the presence of soldiers often signaled an impending raid.

As direct roads were sealed off, journeys that once spanned just four kilometers were forced into detours stretching dozens of kilometers, in the absence of accessible alternative routes. When the settlements were evacuated in 2005, their prefabricated structures were dismantled and removed, leaving the land cleared, but far from being returned to its Palestinian owners.

Settlers’ attempts to return to Ganim, Kadim, Homesh, and Sanur have followed a deliberate, cumulative strategy. It began with repeated incursions into the evacuated sites, particularly Homesh, where in recent years settlers have camped overnight and erected temporary tents under army protection.

Israeli settlers gather outside a portable building under construction at the illegal former settler outpost of Homesh in the occupied West Bank on May 29, 2023. (Photo: Mohammed Nasser/APA Images)

The repeated attempts to reoccupy the hilltop led to the formation of the “Homesh First” settler groups by 2007, which periodically returned to the hilltop with the help of settler networks that supplied food, water, and logistical assistance, allowing a sustained though officially illegal presence to take root.

This presence later expanded through the establishment of religious and educational institutions, most notably the Homesh Yeshiva. What began in tents gradually evolved into caravans, marking a clear shift toward permanent civilian settlement and signaling the transformation of Homesh from a formally evacuated military site into a de facto civilian colony.

According to a report by Yesh Din Volunteers for Human Rights, between 2015 and 2018, settlers were documented in restricted zones more than 40 times, sometimes in groups of dozens or hundreds. Police investigations into settlers’ presence on privately-owned Palestinian land were consistently closed, indicating institutional tolerance for these legal violations.

Between 2017 and 2020, Yesh Din documented 21 violent incidents originating from the Homesh site against Palestinians in Burqa, Silat al-Dhahr, al-Funduqomiya, and Bazariya.

On the ground, new settlement roads were carved out and temporary infrastructure installed across the four sites. Amir Dawud, a researcher with the Palestinian Authority’s Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, explains that these roads are designed to block farmers’ access to their land, sever geographic continuity in the north, and fragment Palestinian space in preparation for renewed settlement, not only as civilian enclaves, but as military zones.

Popular resistance and continuous return

Despite the bleak reality, Palestinians continue to assert their presence. Muhammad Jaradat recounts youth-led initiatives to replant trees uprooted by settlers and organize cleanup campaigns in evacuated areas before renewed closures.

“Before the decision to re-establish the settlements, we used these lands as our own shared spaces,” Jaradat recalls. “Families would come for picnics, children played football, and the community gathered for small events. We also worked to restore old homes near Ganim and Kadim and organized cultural and sporting activities. It was quiet work, but every step was a deliberate way to assert our presence and connection to the land, even under military restrictions.”

In Homesh, the most volatile of the four sites, landowners from the Palestinian village of Burqa filed a petition with the Israeli High Court of Justice, demanding full and unrestricted access to their privately owned land in the former settlement. The petitioners sought not only the restoration of their property rights but also guarantees for their safety, initiating a protracted series of legal proceedings aimed at securing both access to their land and protection from potential threats.

The legal struggle was a success that now only exists on paper. The seizure order has been revoked, and the area has been removed from the list of localities listed in the regional councils, but in practice, an illegal and unauthorized Israeli presence in the settlement remains.

Palestinian farmers remove Hebrew slogans written by Israeli settlers on a water tank on their land atop the former Israeli settlement of Homesh outside the village of Burqa, October 3, 2013. (Photo: Nedal Eshtayah/APA Images)

The same is true of the other settlements, creating a de facto settler presence that directly affects Palestinian landowners: around Sanur, farmers attempting to cultivate their land or harvest olives are routinely subjected to complex permit regimes and frequent denial of access.

The re-settlement of Homesh, Sa-Nur, Ganim, and Kadim is a microcosm of Israel’s broader vision for the West Bank, according to Dawud.

“Israel seeks to create isolated cantons surrounded by settlements and military bases,” he explains, adding that this would create a “security belt” that severs the northern and central West Bank and undermines any possibility of Palestinian sovereignty.

Still, farmers continue to return.

“The forests of Umm al-Tout and the hills of Tal al-Tarsala will continue to bear witness to this struggle of wills,” Jaradat said. “They will wait for the day when hiking returns without fear of a sniper’s bullet or a settler’s stone. Then the carob and oak trees will return to their rightful caretakers.”

Majd Jawad
Majd Jawad is a Journalist and researcher from Jenin, Palestine, holding a Master’s degree in Democracy and Human Rights from Birzeit University and a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism.

The last Columbia student protester in ICE detention: Leqaa Kordia on her 9 months in captivity

Leqaa Kordia has been held by ICE since her arrest in March 2025. Her attorneys say the White House is targeting the last remaining Columbia University protester in custody for her activism, using racism and procedural tricks to prevent her release.

By Sam Judy

January 6, 2026 
MONDOWEISS

Leqaa Kordia


Leqaa Kordia awoke on December 11 to the same nightmare she had been suffering for almost 10 months. Greeted with the stale, sterile smell of Prairieland Detention Center in North Texas on her 33rd birthday, Kordia, who is Muslim, said the day was a solemn one.

“I was sad. I’m a human being, after all. I didn’t want to talk to anybody but [my friends],” Kordia told Mondoweiss. “It should have been a very special day, but I will endure with strength and patience from God, and the support of these women has made it easier.”

The last remaining Columbia University protester left in confinement, Palestinian activist Leqaa Kordia, has been in detention since her arrest in March 2025 after accidentally overstaying her student visa.

“I came here as a tourist, and I changed my visa to student visa. And later, after about six years, I received kind of bad advice from a friend,” Kordia said. “Not intentionally, of course. But I dropped out of school thinking that I had lawful status in the United States.”

Since her arrest, an immigration judge has twice ordered her release, deeming her eligible for bail. Despite this, repeated filings with the Board of Immigration Appeals have left Kordia in a state of continuous legal limbo. If deported, Kordia will be turned over to the Israeli government, which has killed almost 200 members of her family during the genocide in Gaza.

Kordia’s experience in detention has reportedly been wrought with pain and hardship. According to her lawyer’s statements and court filings, Kordia has been sleeping on a thin mattress in a facility currently overcrowded while refusing to provide religious accommodations. The filings also say Kordia suffered a skin rash amid unsanitary conditions.

“Being here for one day is bad enough. So imagine the feeling of being here for [9 months],” Kordia said. “No freedom, no justice. It’s just an ugly place to be.”


“It’s my life. It’s everything. And now I’m advocating for my own life as well as the lives of my people”Leqaa Kordia on what being an advocate for Palestine means to her.

For her birthday, Kordia was gifted a card from her friends in detention with birthday wishes written in several languages, with the intention that she could translate them once she is released. Acclaimed Palestinian writer and activist Laila Al-Haddad, who met Kordia last month after joining her team to handle media and public outreach, spoke to Mondoweiss more on the significance of her birthday.

“In the Islamic tradition, if you die and you go to heaven, you revert back to the age of 33. So whether you were old when you died, whether you were young, that’s thought to be like the perfect or ideal age. Which didn’t even occur to me until she said that [it should have been a special day],” Al-Haddad said.

In continued submissions to the Board of Immigration Appeals, lawyers from the Department of Homeland Security have made repeated arguments to keep Kordia detained, attempting to revoke her bond eligibility through flagging her as a flight risk while disputing claims of civil rights violations. DHS has pointed to Kordia’s protesting and her restitution payments to family members as proof of “support for terrorism” and her legal consultation prior to turning herself in as “abetting law enforcement.” Sarah Sherman-Stokes, a member of Kordia’s legal team and associate director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Program at Boston University School of Law, told Mondoweiss that DHS is targeting Kordia for her activism.

“Leqaa Kordia remains confined because she spoke out for Palestinian liberation and called for an end to the genocide. Leqaa is a woman of faith, a beautiful writer with a quick wit, devoted to her family and community. For more than nine months, the government has relied on anti-Palestinian racism and procedural gamesmanship to keep her confined. As the immigration judge determined not once, but twice, Leqaa should be free.”

On December 5, a group of U.S. Senators, including Cory Booker, Nellie Pou, LaMonica McIver, Andy Kim, Chris Van Hollen, and Bonnie Watson Coleman, submitted a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“As the record shows, [Kordia] has broken no laws and has been convicted of no crimes. Her only ‘offenses’ were an honest mistake that caused her to inadvertently lose her legal status and that she participated in a peaceful, nonviolent demonstration to mourn her loved ones and honor their lives,” the letter reads.

“Rather than punishing speech protected by the First Amendment, this Administration should be defending it, particularly when the individual is acting peacefully, has no criminal history and poses no threat to national security or public safety. We urge you to follow the recommendations of both a Magistrate Judge and an Immigration Judge and immediately release Ms. Kordia.”

As Kordia spent her birthday and the holidays in detention, her legal team was hoping for a decision on either her asylum or habeas case, which are both awaiting further action from the court, so that she could be freed in time for family celebrations. As no decision was made, her case currently remains at a standstill.

“Leqaa has marked another holiday and now a birthday in ICE detention, her punishment for daring to speak up in support of Palestinian rights. Her continued detention in the face of two rulings from an immigration judge that she could be released could not be clearer evidence of retaliation. We continue to hope for a swift decision in her habeas. In the meantime, Leqaa and others suffer in an overcrowded facility, deprived of basic dignities,” said Amal Thabateh, another one of Kordia’s lawyers and staff attorney with the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) Project at Columbia University.

Kordia’s case has attracted the attention of activists, journalists, and human rights advocates, earning her story wide coverage following initial apprehension to reach out to the media. Al-Haddad’s approach to public relations influenced the change in strategy.

“Why would it hurt? My personal opinion is that you need to challenge power. That’s why the media exists, to hold power accountable,” Al-Haddad told Mondoweiss. “I feel like with the Trump administration, with bullies like that you have to push back hard.”

Sadaf Hasan, staff attorney from Muslim Legal Advocates and member of Kordia’s legal team, says Kordia “continues to draw strength and resilience from her faith to persist, survive, and advocate for her liberty, the liberty of her people, and all people confined by the for-profit immigration system.”

“Leqaa’s continued confinement nearly ten months after being swept up in the initial wave of McCarthyite repression should ring the alarm for everyone. As the administration doubles down on silencing free speech beyond targeting non-citizens involved in the Palestine solidarity movement, Leqaa’s story makes one thing unmistakably clear: the government will go to any length to squash all dissent and consolidate authoritarian power. We must keep the pressure up: what began as a crackdown on Palestine solidarity has quickly grown into a broader assault on free expression itself – regardless of citizenship status.”


“Leqaa’s story makes one thing unmistakably clear: the government will go to any length to squash all dissent and consolidate authoritarian power. We must keep the pressure up: what began as a crackdown on Palestine solidarity has quickly grown into a broader assault on free expression itself – regardless of citizenship status.”Sadaf Hasan, staff attorney from Muslim Legal Advocates

Kordia is currently spending her days writing and praying in detention while she awaits progress in either of her cases. In the meantime, the team is focused on strengthening public support.

“We are continuing to push back in federal court against the government’s procedural gamesmanship and political maneuvers to block Leqaa’s release – in collaboration with organizers and policy advocates to build collective power,” said Hasan.

When asked for a comment, DHS provided the same statement given for the last four months, with misspellings of Kordia’s name and grammar mistakes intact:


“On March 13, 2025, HSI Newark arrested Leqaa Kordia, from the West Bank (Palestine), for immigration violations related to overstaying her expired student visa. She violated the terms of her student visa. Previously, in April 2024, Kordia was arrested by local law enforcement for her involvement in pro-Hamas protests at Columbia University in New York City. [sic]

“Korida [sic] was also found to be providing financial support to individuals living in nations hostile to the U.S. [sic]

“On August 28, a judge granted Korida [sic] bond. On September 11, DHS filed a stay to the Board of Immigration Appeals to ensure that she is not released from ICE custody during the appeal process.”

Among public supporters, British journalist Sami Hamdi has called for Leqaa Kordia’s release, providing insight into his own detention after being arrested in California at the end of 2025. Recently, along with others, including Al-Haddad and Imam Todd Facchine, Hamdi spoke at a press event for Kordia held at Port Coffee in Irving, Texas, emphasizing the need for public support.

“What made [ICE] ease their cruelty toward me… was not anything I did in that facility, it had everything to do with what [my supporters] did outside the facility… raising your voices,” Hamdi said.

Hamdi explained that during his stay in detention, a fellow detainee told him, “God does not exist within these walls.” When asked for her opinion on this sentiment, Kordia told Mondoweiss:

“God is everywhere, Alhamdulillah, but I hear this sentiment a lot here,” Kordia said. “God is always with me, and I trust his plans… that kind of faith, that belief keeps me going.

Red state residents lead growing 'rebellion' against data centers that Trump loves: report

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on, as he and Apple CEO Tim Cook (not pictured) present Apple's announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington (Photo: REUTERS)

Carl Gibson

January 06, 2026 

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump's administration has been heralding the construction of data centers to power artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure across the country. But many red state residents are becoming increasingly angry about data centers' intrusion on their rural communities.

That's according to a Tuesday article by the Washington Post's Evan Halper entitled "The data center rebellion is here, and it's reshaping the political landscape," which reported that residents in deep-red states like Indiana, Oklahoma and elsewhere are showing up in droves to public hearings solely to speak out against proposed data center construction. The Post zeroed in on an ongoing conflict over a planned data center in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, where Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) has championed the project.

"We know Trump wants data centers and Kevin Stitt wants data centers, but these things don’t affect these people," Trump supporter Brian Ingram said. "You know, this affects us."

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright admitted that the data centers are unpopular as they have been tied to higher utility costs in adjacent communities, due to their immense power requirements. And the Post noted that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has also railed against data centers due to both their electricity consumption and their draining of precious freshwater sources.

"In rural America right now, where data centers are being built, everyone’s already angry because their electricity prices have risen a lot," Wright said during a December address at the North American Gas Forum. "‘I don’t want them in my state’ is a common viewpoint."

The public pressure campaign on local officials appears to be working. The Post reported that between April and June of 2025, more data center construction projects were cancelled or delayed than in the previous two years combined. Nonpartisan research firm 10a Labs' Data Center Watch found that an estimated $98 billion in data center construction was put on hold in just one quarter last year. Mitch Jones, who is the managing director of policy and litigation at Food and Water Watch, told the Post that the data center construction boom "affects so many issues."

"It takes up farmland in rural communities. It takes up dwindling water sources in communities that need cleaner drinking water. And it is driving up electricity prices for everyone," he said. "It is drawing together people from disparate backgrounds who might not agree on other political issues. They are saying this is taking place without any forethought to communities and we must stop it."

Click here to read the Post's report in its entirety (subscription required).

How Trump could seize Greenland: report

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a press conference, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio react to a Sky News reporter's question at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

David Badash

January 06, 2026 
ALTERNET

President Donald Trump followed his weekend military incursion into Venezuela with comments that suggested warnings to several other countries, including Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Iran, and Greenland.

Some Europeans and the leaders of several of the countries he mentioned, appear to be taking him seriously.

“Trump’s rhetoric, including his suggestion over the weekend that Washington may have to ‘do something’ about cartels that are ‘running Mexico,’ is reviving fears in Mexico City,” Politico reported.

Trump said the government of Cuba might just fall on its own, but, as The Washington Post reported, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio “went further, indicating that the United States might be willing to give it a push.”

With Trump having targeted Greenland for months, some of the territory’s leaders are now concerned it could be at risk.

“Danish officials think they know how Donald Trump might seize Greenland,” The Atlantic reported.

“In a late-night Truth Social post, the president announces that the Danish territory is now an American ‘protectorate.’ Because neither Denmark nor its European allies possess the military force to prevent the United States from taking the island, they are powerless to resist Trump’s dubious claim. And as the leading member of NATO claims the sovereign territory of another state, the alliance is paralyzed. Arguing that possession is nine-tenths of the law, Trump simply declares that Greenland now belongs to the United States.”

According to The Atlantic, this hypothetical scenario has been discussed by Danish officials and security experts in recent months. It “may have seemed faintly ridiculous,” but after Trump’s incursion in Venezuela, including his “ensuing insistence that the United States now ‘runs’ Venezuela—it seemed far less so.”

“For months, Danes have anxiously imagined an audacious move by the Trump administration to annex Greenland, whether by force, coercion, or an attempt to buy off the local population of about 56,000 people with the promise of cutting them in on future mining deals. Now those fears are spiking.”

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has “argued that the president’s threats are credible.”

“Unfortunately, I think the American president should be taken seriously when he says he wants Greenland,” she told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR).

But The Atlantic warned, “if the U.S. goes down that road, NATO will effectively cease to exist the moment the first military personnel enter Greenlandic territory.”

Trump discussing how to acquire Greenland; US military always an option, White House says

The US military’s Pituffik Space Base in Greenland. (File / AFP)

Reuters
January 06, 202621:25

Greenland has repeatedly said it does not want ‌to be part ‌of the United States

Strong statements ‍in support of Greenland from NATO leaders have not deterred Trump


WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump and his team are discussing options for acquiring Greenland and the use ​of the US military in furtherance of the goal is “always an option,” the White House said on Tuesday.

Trump’s ambition of acquiring Greenland as a strategic US hub in the Arctic, where there is growing interest from Russia and China, has been revived in recent days in the wake of the US arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Greenland has repeatedly said it does not want ‌to be part ‌of the United States.

The White House said ‌in ⁠a ​statement ‌in response to queries from Reuters that Trump sees acquiring Greenland as a US national security priority necessary to “deter our adversaries in the Arctic region.”

“The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the US military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal,” the White House ⁠said.

A senior US official said discussions about ways to acquire Greenland are active in the ‌Oval Office and that advisers are discussing ‍a variety of options.

Strong statements ‍in support of Greenland from NATO leaders have not deterred Trump, ‍the official said.

“It’s not going away,” the official said about the president’s drive to acquire Greenland during his remaining three years in office.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said options include the outright US purchase of ​Greenland or forming a Compact of Free Association with the territory. A COFA agreement would stop short of Trump’s ambition ⁠to make the island of 57,000 people a part of the US.

A potential purchase price was not provided.

“Diplomacy is always the president’s first option with anything, and dealmaking. He loves deals. So if a good deal can be struck to acquire Greenland, that would definitely be his first instinct,” the official said.

Administration officials argue the island is crucial to the US due to its deposits of minerals with important high-tech and military applications. These resources remain untapped due to labor shortages, scarce infrastructure and other challenges.

Leaders from major European powers and Canada ‌rallied behind Greenland on Tuesday, saying the Arctic island belongs to its people.

Danish leader mocks top Trump aide as ignorant

European Parliment member Anders Vistisen, from Denmark 

(Photo: Screen capture)

Sarah K. Burris

January 06, 2026

ALTERNET

A member of the European Parliament ridiculed President Donald Trump's top aide, Stephen Miller, implying he is ignorant about history and global affairs.

Speaking to Chris Jansing on MS NOW Tuesday, Anders Vistisen, from Denmark, said that, to some degree, they don't take Trump very seriously.

"In the sense that, of course, it's a bit annoying that every two months or so, the American president claims part of the Danish kingdom. But on the other hand, nobody really expects U.S. Marines or the military to engage in a NATO-allied country. So, I think, in Denmark, it is a great frustration that, apparently, this administration needs to deflect from their internal failures by claiming territories as Greenland, Canada or whatever else that have been mentioned during the past year."

"I don't think there's really any doubt that the USA and the military of the USA would invade Greenland that [not] much could be done about it. But as the prime minister stated, it would be a collapse of the NATO alliance to see one NATO ally attack another NATO ally's territory," he continued.

Vistisen said that he sees a big difference in what Trump has done in Venezuela and what it would mean if Trump went to war with Europe. Denmark, he noted, has been a U.S. ally for more than 70 years.

"Also the U.S. has numerous times acknowledged its sovereignty over Greenland in State Department treaties and other places," he added. "So, there's really no doubt that the territory of Greenland belongs in the Kingdom of Denmark, unless the people of Greenland decide to go in another direction. And that's a political decision for the Greenlandic people to take without any interference from overseas."

Miller appeared on CNN's Jake Tapper Monday, where he announced that the Trump administration believes it should have Greenland. Miller said that if there were to be a military action, it wouldn't be "against Greenland," implying it would be against NATO.

"What right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark? The United States is the power of NATO, for the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests. Obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States."

Greenland is part of NATO, and the U.S. has the Pituffik Space Base on the island. The U.S. has had a defense pact with Denmark since 1951, and the island supports a missile warning and defense system, along with space surveillance, the Space Force website explains.

National security reporter reveals mind-boggling taxpayer cost of Trump’s Venezuela project

U.S. President Donald Trump listens to a reporter’s question aboard Air Force One en route from Florida to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., January 4, 2026.

 REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Thomas Kika

January 06, 2026 

ALTERNET

The real cost of President Donald Trump's plans for Venezuela is beginning to emerge.

Despite his earlier claim that the U.S. incursion there would cost nothing, a national security reporter for MS NOW on Tuesday argued that the entire project could cost U.S. taxpayers billions and last for decades.

Over the weekend, the U.S. military conducted a strike on Caracas, Venezuela, leading to the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro, who will face "narco-terrorism" charges in New York City. Reports indicate that roughly 70 were killed in the attack, including around 40 Venezuelan civilians.

Trump has stated bluntly in the aftermath of the operation that the plan is for the U.S. to take control of the country's vast oil fields and rebuild them. While Trump initially claimed that the operations in Venezuela would be entirely paid for by oil profits, he later said there might be a cost to US taxpayers.

During a Tuesday appearance on Ana Cabrera Reports, MS Now national security reporter David Rhode confirmed that the project "to fix up the oil infrastructure in Venezuela" could cost $100 billion in taxpayer money.

"It means money, money, money for oil companies," Rhode said. "That $100 billion figure that you mentioned is accurate at the beginning of the broadcast. And that's going to be funded by U.S. taxpayers, in terms of the initial efforts to reconstruct this industry."

Aside from the high price tag, Rhode also noted that the plan to start harvesting oil from the South American country could take decades to come to fruition.

"And it could take 10 to 20 years to get this heavy crude out of the ground in Venezuela. It's heavy crude," Rhode continued. "It needs a lot of refining, and it's difficult to extract from the ground."

The cost to American taxpayers does not end with the plans to rebuild the country's oil industry, as the continued U.S. military presence in Venezuela and the first raid to capture Maduro also carry a hefty price.

"The other cost here is these military actions," Rhode explained. "A colleague of ours at MS NOW was told by a former senior military official that... this raid itself cost anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion. And to continue to have this flotilla of ships, continue to have all these aircraft over Venezuela or near Venezuela, that costs taxpayers as well. So this is not free or cheap or easy. And again, you can't just claim to run a country and then pretend it doesn't cost anything and you don't have any responsibility."

Days After U.S. Operation, Chevron Resumes Oil Shipments From Venezuela

iStock / HeliRy

Published Jan 5, 2026 5:37 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

On Monday, the latest consignment of Venezuelan oil for U.S. supermajor Chevron departed for the Gulf Coast, a show of continuity after the U.S. capture of former dictator Nicolas Maduro last weekend. It was the first Chevron cargo to depart since January 1, according to Reuters.  

Chevron is the only American oil major working in Venezuela, where it has more than a century of history in developing onshore E&P. It currently produces about 240,000 bpd of crude in the country, near its maximum planned capacity, Reuters reports.  

After last weekend's developments in Caracas, Wall Street responded to the prospect of a foreign investment-friendly Venezuelan regime by bidding up share prices of the firms well-placed to capitalize on a stronger private participation in the oil industry. Chevron stock is up by 8.5 percent since last week, buoyed by its likely outlook in Venezuelan oil, as well as the first production from a new well off Angola. American oilfield-services firms SLB (formerly Schlumberger) and Halliburton, which would be well-positioned to carry out upgrades for Venezuela's deteriorated oil infrastructure, both rose more than 15 percent over the same period. 

Oil prices have not changed appreciably since the takeover, a sign of investor expectation that Venezuelan exports will remain steady for the near future. A full restoration of peak production of Venezuela's extra-heavy crude would require significant infrastructure investment and years of effort, energy market analysts say. 

Oil industry insiders warn Trump 'made a major miscalculation'

“Venezuela is broke. It doesn’t have any money. The national oil company is in disarray. It can barely feed its people," 

 Flare system of the sea oil production platform.

Sarah K. Burris

January 06, 2026 

ALTERNET

Large oil companies aren't enthusiastic about taking over the oil field operations in Venezuela after President Donald Trump attacked the country and seized its leader Nicolás Maduro. It may mean a major blunder on Trump's part.

“The appetite for jumping into Venezuela right now is pretty low. We have no idea what the government there will look like,” said an oil industry source in an interview with CNN on Monday.


“The president’s desire is different than the industry’s. And the White House would have known that if they had communicated with the industry prior to the operation on Saturday," the person said.

It flies in the face of the White House's claim that all oil companies in the U.S. are "ready and willing to make big investments" to "rebuild their oil infrastructure, which was destroyed by the illegitimate Maduro regime."

"American oil companies will do an incredible job for the people of Venezuela and will represent the United States well," said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers to CNN.

Trump said in a press conference Saturday at Mar-a-Lago that his enthusiasm about the invasion of Venezuela was, at least in part, the idea that U.S. oil companies would explode with profit.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies — the biggest anywhere in the world — go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure,” Trump claimed.

But the companies aren't all on board, noting that it is a risky venture. The CNN report warned that this operation could have been "a major miscalculation" on Trump's part.

“Just because there are oil reserves – even the largest in the world – doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to produce there... This isn’t like standing up a food truck operation," another industry source told CNN.

The same person went on to say that Trump's slapdash plan puts “rhetoric before reality” and noted that investing overseas requires political stability.

There are only a few oil companies that have the money and experience to build a production operation in Venezuela. Chevron is one of those, in large part because it's the only company that has remained the country despite decades of instability, CNN said.

Exxon and Conoco may have the capital, but they have already been burned by business in the country before.

"Conoco is still trying to recover an estimated $12 billion from the prior nationalization of its Venezuela assets, while ExxonMobil is seeking to recover almost $2 billion," wrote CNN, citing a previous Reuters report.

Luisa Palacios, a former Citgo chairwoman and Venezuela native, highlighted the dire state of Venezuela's economy and oil sector.

“Venezuela is broke. It doesn’t have any money. The national oil company is in disarray. It can barely feed its people," she told CNN.

Read the full report here.