Israel is exploring building a base in Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland from which it can target Yemen’s Houthis, according to a Bloomberg report on Wednesday.
In December, Israel became the first country to recognise Somaliland as a sovereign state.
Somaliland will allow Israel to gather intelligence on and conduct operations against the Houthis, two Somaliland officials speaking on condition of anonymity told Bloomberg.
Israel has laid the groundwork for a possible base in the region: in June, a group of Israeli security officials visited the Somaliland coastline, people familiar with the matter said.
There they surveyed the beaches, in search of a potential site for a base or installation to fight the Houthi movement, which is officially known as Ansar Allah.
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The site would be around 260km from Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden.
Israel also rented rooms fitted with blast-proof windows on the top floor of a hotel in Hargeisa, people familiar with the matter said, as it scouted a location for an embassy.
“In terms of security, we will have a strategic relationship and that encompasses a lot of things,” Khadar Hussein Abdi, Somaliland’s minister of the presidency, told Bloomberg.
“We haven’t discussed with them if it becomes a military base, but definitely there will be an analysis at some point.”
Shortly after Israeli recognition of the breakaway region was confirmed on 26 December, Somaliland officials travelled to Israel to deepen security ties, sources told Bloomberg.
One of Israel’s ‘greatest threats’
The Houthi movement, a close ally of Iran, has yet to weigh in since the US and Israel attacked Iran over a week ago. Iran has retaliated to the war by attacking Israel as well as targets in countries all over the region.
Why Yemen’s Houthis are hesitating to join Iran war, for now
During Israel’s war on Gaza, the Houthis launched missile and drone strikes on international shipping in the Red Sea as well as on Israel, in an act of solidarity with Palestinians.
An Israeli general told Bloomberg that a special intelligence unit was set up on the Houthis, who the general said had hundreds of rockets that could reach Israel.
While Israel had been discussing Somaliland recognition for years, the deal was sealed in December because of Israeli intelligence officers viewing the Houthis as one of Israel’s greatest threats, regional diplomats and a senior Israeli military official told Bloomberg.
As a result of the Red Sea attacks, maritime traffic via the Gulf of Aden dropped 70 percent in two years.
As for the attacks on Israel, strikes in September 2025 briefly halted traffic at Ramon Airport in southern Israel, while another broke Israeli air defences and struck a hotel in the resort city of Eilat.
Somaliland ties with UAE
Somaliland has been part of the unified Somali Republic since 1960, but declared its independence in 1991 and established a de facto state.
Although it has had unofficial diplomatic relations with several countries, its sovereignty had not been recognised by any permanent UN member state until Israel did so in December.
In August, Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, wrote to President Donald Trump urging him to formally recognise Somaliland.
Former Somaliland president demands agreement with Israel be made public
Cruz said Hargeisa was seeking to strengthen ties with Israel and had voiced support for the Abraham Accords.
One of the locations under consideration for an Israeli base or installation is an area of high terrain about 100km west of the port city of Berbera, sources told Bloomberg.
The city is where the UAE, a close ally of Somaliland, has a military airstrip and a harbour run by its logistics company DP World.
MEE reported in October that Somaliland’s Berbera port was part of a network of bases along the Gulf of Aden built by the UAE.
The Somaliland government accepted an Emirati bid in 2017 to establish a military base in Berbera.
Satellite imagery shows the naval base in Berbera has been transformed from a stalled project into a near-completed facility, with advanced infrastructure including a modern military port, a deep-water dock and an airstrip with hangars and support facilities.
The runway at Berbera is 4km long, allowing it to receive heavy transport aircraft and fighter jets.
In January, Somalia cut all commercial and security ties with the UAE, citing DP World’s ports in Berbera and Bosaso, the latter of which is in Puntland, another semi-autonomous region of Somalia.
The administrations in Somaliland and Puntland both rejected Somalia’s announcement.