Israel's Gaza Deportation Plans Backfire - And All Thanks To An Ally

Right, so Taiwan likes to see itself reflected in Israel: a besieged little democracy, plucky, resilient, and forever proving its right to exist against a hostile giant, in their case China, just as Israel claims to be surrounded by hostile Arab forces. It is a flattering comparison, rehearsed endlessly in Taipei’s speeches and Washington’s talking points. Yet if Taiwan were honest, it would recognise its true mirror image not in Tel Aviv but in Gaza — another people denied recognition, menaced by a larger neighbour, and struggling simply to exist. That irony alone would be enough. But the story grows sharper still. Because while Taiwan insists on seeing itself in Israel, it is in Somaliland that their paths have fatally crossed. Israel and the United States imagined Somaliland as a convenient dumping ground for Palestinians driven from Gaza, a place so desperate for recognition itself, that it might accept human lives as bargaining chips potentially. And yet, it was Taiwan — Israel’s supposed friend — that got there first. By planting its flag in Hargeisa, pouring in aid and signing security deals, Taiwan has made Somaliland far less pliable for Israel now. In trying to affirm its own existence, Taiwan has, by accident, blown up Israel’s grotesque relocation plans in their faces.
Right, so the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza since October 2023 has forced the international community to confront, once again, the brutal logic at the core of Israeli state policy: the displacement and elimination of the Palestinian people. Independent Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel have described the campaign as genocidal, while international legal experts have pointed to the deliberate use of starvation and bombardment to make Gaza uninhabitable. Israel’s strategy, as laid bare by the rubble of hospitals, the famine pervading the entire Strip, and the deliberate blocking of aid, has nothing to do with suppressing Hamas but to erase Gaza as a viable home for all Palestinians.
Yet genocide, as history grimly shows, raises not only moral but logistical questions for its perpetrators. What is to be done with the population if it is driven en masse from its homes as Israel wants to do? Well as we know, investigations in 2024 and 2025 have revealed that Washington and Tel Aviv have been canvassing African states about the possibility of absorbing Palestinians displaced from Gaza. Governments in Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Somaliland have allegedly been approached. Palestinians, after enduring bombardment and famine, were being treated as if they were excess cargo to be exported — a surplus population to be shipped abroad like an unwanted commodity.
Among the potential relocation sites, Somaliland for one, stood out. Though unrecognised by the international community, it has functioned as a de facto independent state since 1991, with its own elections, institutions, and armed forces. For US and Israeli planners, Somaliland’s ambiguous status and desperate need for recognition appeared to make it an ideal candidate for transactional diplomacy: host displaced Palestinians in return for international acknowledgment or aid. Yet here, in the Horn of Africa, their scheme has collided with an unexpected obstacle. Since 2020, Taiwan — itself unrecognised by much of the world under Beijing’s “One China” policy — has cultivated deepening ties with Somaliland, establishing mutual representative offices, investing in aid and scholarships, and most recently signing a maritime security agreement just last month.
That one of Israel’s own friends, not its foes, may have ruined its most desperate plan raises a deeper question here: how could such a thing happen?
Well, let’s set the scene to answer this. Somaliland emerged from the ruins of Somalia’s civil war as a functioning political entity, declaring independence in 1991 after the fall of Siad Barre’s dictatorship. Since then, it has held elections, built institutions, and maintained relative stability compared to Mogadishu’s chaos. Yet no state formally recognises it, with the African Union wary of legitimising secession and fearful of setting a precedent for other separatist movements. Somaliland’s unrecognised status has left it in a liminal state: functioning and autonomous, yet perpetually vulnerable to exploitation.
Strategically though, Somaliland is a prize. Situated at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden, its coastline looks directly across to Yemen and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s most vital trade chokepoints as the Houthis of Yemen have made very clear to Israel already. Control of this corridor matters enormously to regional and global powers therefore. The United Arab Emirates has invested in Berbera Port, seeking a logistics hub and potential military presence. China has established its first overseas military base in Djibouti, just up the coast, just next door in fact. The United States also maintains forces in Djibouti, wary of Beijing’s expansion.
For Israel though, Somaliland has been seen as both a potential strategic ally and, more disturbingly, a potential dumping ground. The Jerusalem Post as a for instance reported last year that Israeli strategists were interested in Somaliland as a foothold to monitor Red Sea shipping and counter the Houthi movement in Yemen. But in parallel, Somaliland was also named in US and Israeli relocation overtures to African governments. The logic was purely transactional though: Somaliland, desperate for recognition, might accept Palestinians in exchange for international legitimacy.
The plan, however, revealed both grotesque cynicism and political ignorance. Somaliland has a population of roughly 4.5 million and fragile clan-based institutions. Hosting even a fraction of Gaza’s two million people would destabilise what is already not particularly stable. Somalia, which still claims Somaliland as its territory, would fiercely oppose such a move, and the African Union would not recognise it. Even before Taiwan’s presence, the relocation scheme was implausible. But with Taiwan’s active engagement, it became impossible.
The idea of exporting Palestinians is not new. It is a dark thread woven through Israeli history since 1948. During the Nakba, more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in what Israeli leaders euphemistically called “population transfer.” This was not incidental wartime chaos but a systematic campaign. Prime Minister Moshe Sharett’s diaries spoke frankly of the need to “remove the Arabs” to secure a Jewish state.
In later decades, this thinking persisted. Ariel Sharon in the 1980s floated plans to move Palestinians into Jordan. In 2004, one of his advisers suggested Gaza’s population might be pushed into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Each scheme reflected the same underlying conviction: the Palestinian presence is a problem to be solved by displacement.
The 2024–2025 outreach to African states fits this continuity. The Associated Press reported that US and Israeli officials canvassed governments about accepting Palestinians. The Financial Times confirmed Congo’s involvement. Somaliland was one of the candidates. The notion of shipping traumatised Gazans to the Horn of Africa, treating them as surplus lives to be warehoused elsewhere, was both grotesque and revealing. It showed that Israel’s genocide was not only about destruction within Gaza but also about imagining new geographies of erasure and the seizure of their lands for Israel.
It is against this background that Taiwan’s presence matters. In August 2020, Taiwan opened a Representative Office in Hargeisa, and Somaliland opened one in Taipei the following month. This was the first time Somaliland had such an office in East Asia. The symbolism was therefore powerful: two unrecognised democracies recognising each other in practice.
Taiwan’s motives were very clear, they were the same as everyone else with an interest in the Middle East. Somaliland offers a foothold on the Red Sea, a counter to China’s base in Djibouti, and access to untapped resources. Symbolically, Somaliland mirrors Taiwan’s own struggle for recognition. Both claim functioning democracy, both are excluded from the United Nations, both operate under threat from more powerful neighbours. A report in The Cradle described Taiwan’s decision to “plant its flag” in Somaliland as a deliberate poke at Beijing, but actually it doesn’t help Israel’s deportation plans either, though from a US standpoint, poking China in the eye might be worth Israel’s loss here.
Since 2020, the relationship between Taiwan and Somaliland has deepened though. Taiwan’s International Cooperation and Development Fund has sent agricultural experts, medical missions, and scholarships. In July 2025, Somaliland’s Foreign Minister Essa Kayd signed a coast guard and maritime security agreement with President Lai in Taipei. The agreement pledged training, equipment, and joint maritime surveillance. President Lai spoke of “shared democratic resilience.” Essa Kayd called Taiwan a “brother nation.” This was no longer symbolic then, but concrete cooperation.
For Somaliland, Taiwan provides not only aid but recognition. For Taiwan, Somaliland is a partner in its global campaign to defy isolation. This partnership strengthens Somaliland’s bargaining power and makes it less vulnerable to Israeli or American manipulation as a result.
So here’s where the irony becomes acute. Taiwan has gone out of its way to show support for Israel since October 2023, donating more than half a million dollars’ worth of supplies and condemning Hamas’s attacks. Taiwanese officials drew parallels between Israel’s situation and Taiwan’s own under Chinese threat.
And yet, Taiwan’s Somaliland diplomacy has blown up Israel’s relocation plan. Israel wanted Somaliland pliable, desperate enough to trade land for legitimacy. Taiwan wanted Somaliland stable, visible, and tied into its democratic narrative. So the agendas have collided head-on. Taiwan’s engagement empowered Somaliland, giving it an alternative source of recognition. That empowerment made the relocation scheme implode before it could even be negotiated.
The collision is doubly awkward for Israel. Israel formally recognises China, not Taiwan, and seeks to avoid antagonising Beijing. If Somaliland is now branded as a Taiwanese ally, Israeli involvement risks entanglement in the Taiwan–China conflict. Thus, Israel finds itself blocked not by Palestinian resistance alone, but by the diplomacy of a supposed friend. What was intended as a grotesque ethnic cleansing plan has backfired spectacularly, collapsing under the contradictions of allied agendas.
Israel and Taiwan have long maintained close but unofficial ties. Representative offices were established in 1993. Bilateral trade reached 2.67 billion US dollars in 2022, covering agriculture, science, technology, and cybersecurity. Taiwan has studied Israel’s civil defence, while Israel has eyed Taiwan’s semiconductor expertise.
Yet contradictions still run deep. Israel recognises Beijing, not Taipei, and has been careful to cultivate China as a trade partner, therefore won’t actually recognise Taiwan. Taiwan knows Israel will not formally recognise it. In 2024, when Israeli operatives used Taiwanese-branded Gold Apollo pagers in covert attacks on Hezbollah, Taiwan was embarrassed but Israel brushed it off. The relationship is pragmatic and transactional and again it reinforces the fact that non recognition of states, makes them vulnerable to exploitation.
Against this backdrop, Taiwan’s Somaliland diplomacy is especially awkward. Israel cannot openly pressure Taiwan without jeopardising quiet cooperation. Nor can it engage Somaliland without entangling itself in the China–Taiwan rivalry. Once again, the contradictions make the relocation scheme untenable.
Taiwan’s government has aligned with Israel, condemning Hamas and voicing solidarity. Yet Taiwanese civil society shows more sympathy for Palestine as is so often the case. Student rallies in Taipei in November 2023 displayed Palestinian flags and condemned genocide. Indigenous activists in Taiwan have drawn parallels between their own history of dispossession and the Palestinian struggle.
This divergence is important. Officially, Taiwan stands with Israel. But in practice, Taiwan’s Somaliland diplomacy indirectly shields Palestinians from relocation. By giving Somaliland alternative recognition, Taiwan obstructs a scheme that would have deepened Palestinian dispossession. In doing so, Taiwan’s actions align more with the instincts of its grassroots than with its government’s rhetoric, but I’m of a mind that is purely incidental.
The lesson of this episode is stark though. Ethnic cleansing cannot succeed even on its own cynical terms. Israel’s relocation fantasies collapsed under multiple pressures: local resistance in Somaliland, regional opposition from Somalia and the African Union, global entanglement with China–Taiwan rivalries, and the contradictions of Israel’s own alliances and many of these difficulties will remain where it comes to other African nations too.
The grotesque absurdity of treating Palestinians as exportable cargo collided with the messy realities of geopolitics. Israel’s plan for Somaliland has imploded not only because it was morally repugnant but because the machinery of international politics will not bend neatly to genocidal designs either, even those of a supposed ally.
In Gaza, Israel has sought erasure. In Washington, officials colluded in exploring relocation. In Africa, governments were approached. But in Somaliland, another story unfolded: Taiwan, one of Israel’s unofficial allies, cultivated a partnership that is inadvertently blocking Israel’s genocidal plan.
The irony is biting. Israel’s scheme to export Palestinians collapsed not because of Arab states that they claim to be persecuted and terrorised by, not because of global outrage at their genocide either, but because Taiwan’s diplomacy made it blow up in their face. One of Israel’s friends did more to prevent relocation than many who claim to defend Palestine, I’d certainly argue that includes the EU and UN here.
This episode shows that ethnic cleansing is doomed not only by moral law but by political contradiction. Even allies backfire. Even friends obstruct. In trying to export Gaza’s people, Israel found its plan imploding under the very alliances it thought it could rely on. The Palestinian people cannot be erased, not because the world is just, but because even the realpolitik of power contains too many wires crossing for genocide to pass smoothly into “solution.” Something I suppose we should be grateful for, but its not enough on its own and difficulties and problems, if both parties are determined enough, can be overcome, so this doesn’t let Israel off the hook. That they even tried deportation, that they even floated this idea, should damn them still in itself.
Of course being a friend or ally of Israel doesn’t necessarily mean anything, as Jordan appear to be learning to their cost. Benjamin Netanyahu’s Greater Israel plan might not reach as far down the African coast as Somaliland, but Jordan is in the line of fire and the reintroduction of national service there implies they know it too. Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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