Thousands of protesters and strikers calling for solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza took to the streets in Italy on Monday, with some storming Milan’s central train station and clashing violently with police.
Italy’s grassroots unions, which represent hundreds of thousands of people ranging from schoolteachers to metalworkers, called for a 24-hour general strike in both public and private sectors, including public transportation, trains, schools and ports.
The strike caused disruptions across the country, with long delays for national trains and limited public transport in major cities, including Rome.
In Milan, tensions escalated when dozens of protesters dressed in black and armed with batons tried to smash the main entrance of the city’s central train station, throwing smoke bombs, bottles and stones at police, who responded with pepper spray. In Bologna, police used water cannons to disperse a crowd of demonstrators who blocked a highway.
The transit of goods was slowed or partially blocked by workers’ sit-ins and rallies in Italy’s main ports of Genoa and Livorno. More than 20,000 people gathered in front of Rome’s central station to protest the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Unions and student organizations denounced “the inertia of the Italian and EU governments.”
“If we don’t block what Israel is doing, if we don’t block trade, the distribution of weapons and everything else with Israel, we will not ever achieve anything,” said Walter Montagnoli, national secretary of the CUB union, who joined a march in Milan.
Premier Giorgia Meloni condemned violent clashes sparked by some protesters as “shameful.”
“Violence and destruction have nothing to do with solidarity and won't change a thing in the lives of people in Gaza,” she wrote on X.
The conservative government headed by Meloni, a close Israeli ally in the EU, has more recently adopted a harsher tone on Israeli policies as domestic pressure mounted over the war. Italy, however, is not among the countries, including France, that will formally recognize a Palestinian state at this week’s UN General Assembly.
The creation of a Palestinian state in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza has long been seen internationally as the only way to resolve the conflict, which began more than a century before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza. In the attack, Hamas-led fighters killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251. There are still 48 hostages remaining in Gaza, of whom Israel believes 20 are still alive.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive over the past 23 months has killed more than 65,100 people in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, destroyed vast areas of the strip, displaced around 90% of the population and caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, with experts saying Gaza City is experiencing famine.
The ministry is under the Hamas-run government. UN agencies and many independent experts consider its figures to be the most reliable estimate of wartime casualties. It does not say how many of those killed were civilians or combatants.
