EXCLUSIVEHassan Sheikh Mohamud says his country believes the move is linked to Israel’s plans to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza.Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has told Al Jazeera that Israel’s “unexpected and strange” recognition of Somaliland may have implications for Palestinians in Gaza.“Somaliland has been claiming the secession issue for a long time, over the past three decades, and no one country in the world has recognised it,” Mohamud told Al Jazeera in an exclusive interview from Istanbul, Turkiye, on Tuesday.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list“For us, we’ve been trying to reunite the country in a peaceful manner,” the Somali leader added. “So, after 34 years, it was very unexpected and strange that Israel, out of nowhere, just jumped in and said, ‘We recognise Somaliland’.”Israel last week became the first and only country to formally recognise Somaliland, a breakaway region in northwest Somalia, bordering the Gulf of Aden.Somalia’s president also told Al Jazeera that, according to Somali intelligence, Somaliland has accepted three Israeli conditions in exchange for Israeli recognition: the resettlement of Palestinians, the establishment of an Israeli military base on the coast of the Gulf of Aden, and Somaliland joining the Abraham Accords. The accords are a set of pacts establishing the normalisation of ties between Israel and several Arab states. The UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have signed onto the accords.Mohamud also said that Somalia has intelligence indicating there is already a certain level of Israeli presence in Somaliland, and Israeli recognition of the region is merely a normalisation of what was already happening co …
