ROME (AP) — Thousands of workers and students across Italy joined a general strike and widespread demonstrations on Monday in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
Italy’s grassroots unions — which are active at a local level — called for the 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 and Milan.
In Milan, a small group of protesters dressed in black and armed with batons tried to smash the entrance door at the city's central station, but were dispersed by police.
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, marching in Milan with protesters.
The Italian government headed by conservative Premier Giorgia 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 U.N. 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 militants 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. U.N. 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.
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