ONLY IN TLF: Israel, Yemen’s Partition Debate, and the STC: Why Recognition Would Be Strategically Tempting—Yet Politically Costly
1) Why Yemen’s south matters to Israel’s Red Sea security calculus
Israel is directly affected by instability in the Red Sea because it is a major global shipping artery; prior to the Houthi campaign, the Red Sea accounted for a significant share of global maritime traffic, and Israel has faced added costs and disruptions—including impacts tied to Eilat’s function as a southern maritime outlet. Israel’s security community has long viewed the Bab al‑Mandeb as strategically vital and has worried that Iran and its partners could exploit the chokepoint to pressure Israel and its trade. Against that backdrop, Somaliland’s location—at the maritime junction opposite Yemen—offers a partner positioned to support monitoring, logistics, or intelligence cooperation in a zone where the Houthis have targeted shipping. The same geographic logic makes southern Yemen—with its ports, islands, and coastline—an obvious arena for Israel to seek indirect advantage over the Houthis and, by extension, Iran’s regional posture.
2) The STC’s appeal: a potential “friendly” southern authority
The STC is the dominant secessionist actor in southern Yemen and, even while participating in Yemen’s internationally recognized political framework (the PLC), it continues to pursue autonomy/independence and has repeatedly sought to consolidate de facto control in the south. Crucially for the Israel angle, the STC leadership has publicly signaled openness to joining the Abraham Accords in a future independent south—an overture designed to attract external backing and legitimacy. Analysts note that the STC’s outreach is also intertwined with the UAE’s broader normalization architecture and security interests along the Gulf of Aden and Bab al‑Mandeb. For Israel, a southern entity that is anti‑Houthi, security‑oriented, and normalization‑curious could look like a rare prospective partner on the Yemeni chessboard, especially compared with a Houthi‑held north that has launched attacks tied to the Gaza war and maritime pressure campaigns.
3) Why “partition” can look attractive—strategically
From a hard‑security perspective, Yemen’s de facto fragmentation already exists: the Houthis dominate large northern areas while southern power centers—including STC‑aligned forces—hold or contest key southern terrain. A formalized two‑entity outcome (north/south) could, in theory, let external actors treat the south as a distinct security partner for maritime policing, counter‑smuggling, and port protection—exactly the issues Western and regional powers emphasize amid Houthi maritime threats. This is where the sequence after Somaliland matters: by recognizing a coastal polity near Bab al‑Mandeb, Israel demonstrated willingness to privilege chokepoint geopolitics over the diplomatic costs of challenging inherited borders—an approach that could conceptually translate to Yemen if the benefits looked decisive.
4) Why formal recognition of the STC would be far riskier than Somaliland
Yet recognizing the STC as a “separate government” would likely be much more destabilizing diplomatically than Somaliland. Yemen already has an internationally recognized authority structure (the PLC), and the STC is formally embedded within it even while pushing separatism—making any external recognition of the STC as the government an explicit rupture with prevailing diplomatic frameworks. It could also inflame the Saudi‑UAE fault line in Yemen: reporting and analysis show that STC expansion has increased tensions and risked confrontation with Saudi preferences in eastern/southern provinces, despite both opposing the Houthis. A unilateral Israeli recognition could therefore complicate Israel’s quiet coordination with Gulf partners by appearing to pick sides inside the anti‑Houthi camp rather than against the Houthis alone.
There is also the blowback problem. After Somaliland recognition, Houthi leadership publicly threatened that any Israeli presence there would be treated as a military target, underscoring how recognition moves can trigger escalation narratives and operational risks. If Israel recognized the STC, the Houthis could frame it as proof of an “Israeli‑UAE project” in Yemen, potentially intensifying missile, drone, or maritime attacks—and providing propaganda leverage across Yemen’s polarized politics.
5) The most plausible pathway: de facto engagement, not de jure recognition (for now)
Given these costs, the more realistic near‑term trajectory is incremental, deniable engagement—intelligence sharing, maritime coordination, or indirect collaboration via Abraham Accords partners—rather than a dramatic recognition of the STC as a separate government. Indeed, much analysis of STC‑Israel dynamics emphasizes how the STC uses signals of normalization to court Western/Israeli sympathy, while Israel benefits from the option value of southern partners without taking the diplomatic hit of recognition. In short, Somaliland recognition may have opened a new recognition playbook for Israel around strategic chokepoints but applying it to Yemen via the STC would be a higher‑stakes escalation—one that could unsettle Gulf relations, energize Houthi retaliation, and deepen Yemen’s fragmentation at a moment of extreme volatility.