Not an inch of our sea: Somalia rejects Israeli designs on the port of Berbera

Somalia will not accept an Israeli presence "under any circumstances", President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has said, warning that Israel is planning to establish a naval base at the port of Berbera. The remarks came in an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera published on Friday. Berbera, on the Gulf of Aden, is the principal deep-water port of the breakaway region of Somaliland, which declared independence from Somalia in 1991 and has governed itself since — without international recognition. Mogadishu regards Berbera as sovereign Somali territory, and any foreign military footprint there as a violation of that sovereignty. A naval base at Berbera would place Israeli forces at one of the world's most sensitive chokepoints. The Gulf of Aden feeds into the Bab el-Mandeb strait, through which a significant share of global trade — and of the oil that powers Asia and Europe — passes every day. For a region already scarred by the war on Gaza and widening confrontation across the Red Sea, a new foreign military presence would be a match near tinder. The president's warning draws a line that is as much about Somalia's own fracture as about Israel. For three decades Mogadishu has insisted that Somaliland's separateness is temporary and its territory indivisible. An Israeli flag flying over Berbera would, in that view, be two violations at once: a foreign power planting itself on Somali soil, and a further wedge driven into a country still struggling to hold itself together. Whether Tel Aviv has concrete plans or is merely testing the waters, the message from Mogadishu is unambiguous: Somalia's sea and soil are not on offer. In a region where outside powers have long treated African coastlines as staging grounds, that refusal deserves to be reported plainly — and taken seriously. The Horn of Africa has become one of the most militarised coastlines on earth. Foreign bases already dot Djibouti, just across the strait, where American, French, Chinese and Japanese forces sit within miles of one another. Adding an Israeli installation at Berbera would deepen that crowded military geography — and pull Somalia, barely emerging from decades of conflict, into rivalries it did not choose.