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 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.
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.”
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 sparked the ongoing war in Gaza. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 65,100 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, displaced some 90% of the population, left much of the territory uninhabitable and pushed some areas into famine.
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