Somalia’s president held a secret meeting in early 2020 with Israeli then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli media reported on Monday.
Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, popularly known by his nickname Farmaajo, flew to Al-Quds (Jerusalem) in February of that year with Balal Osman, Mohamed’s special envoy for Horn of Africa, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, The Times of Israel quoted a former diplomat with knowledge of the trips as saying.
The two men discussed the possibility of establishing ties between the two sides. But those efforts were not supported by then-US president Donald Trump, who didn’t want to include Somalia in the normalization deals that would come to be known as the “Abraham Accords”, said the diplomat.
“He didn’t want to deal with the country, he thought it was a ‘shithole country,’” the former diplomat said on Monday.
The official said that attacks on Trump by Democratic US Representative Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia who moved to the US, turned the president off to the country.
The previous time that Netanyahu and Mohamed met was on November 28, 2017, on the sidelines of a well-publicized meeting between Netanyahu and Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi, said the former diplomat. That sit-down with Mohamed took place at Netanyahu’s request.
Spokespeople for Netanyahu did not respond to requests for comment, according to The Times of Israel.
According to the diplomat, Farmaajo also instructed Somalia’s ambassador to Switzerland, Faduma Abdullahi Mohamud, to abstain on a 2019 UN Human Rights Council vote condemning the Zionist entity over the Golan Heights. He wanted to test domestic and international reaction to the show of support for ‘Israel’.
Mohamud was summoned home by Somalia’s Foreign Ministry after the vote. Farmaajo had no choice but to punish her after receiving both internal and external threats, said the former diplomat.
The Zionist entity does not have diplomatic relations with the East African nation, which has a population of some 11 million. Somalia, a mostly Sunni Muslim country and a member of the Arab League, has never recognized the Zionist entity.
Still, there have been a series of unverified reports of warming ties between the two sides.
Source: Israeli media
