{"id":246665,"date":"2025-09-22T16:01:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T16:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/246665\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T16:01:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T16:01:20","slug":"pro-palestinian-protests-held-across-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/246665\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro-Palestinian protests held across Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROME (AP) \u2014 Thousands of protesters and strikers calling for solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza<\/a> took to the streets in Italy on Monday, with some storming Milan\u2019s central train station and clashing violently with police.<\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The strike caused disruptions across the country, with long delays for national trains and limited public transport in major cities, including Rome.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n AP AUDIO: Italian workers\u2019 strike in solidarity with Gaza brings disruptions across the country\n <\/p>\n

Pro-Palestinian protesters in Rome, Italy chant \u201cFree Free Palestine\u201d in Italian and English, at a rally in the Piazza dei Cinquecento, outside Termini train station.<\/p>\n

In Milan, tensions escalated when dozens of protesters dressed in black and armed with batons tried to smash the main entrance of the city\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

The transit of goods was slowed or partially blocked by workers\u2019 sit-ins and rallies in Italy\u2019s main ports of Genoa and Livorno. More than 20,000 people gathered in front of Rome\u2019s central station to protest the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Unions and student organizations denounced \u201cthe inertia of the Italian and EU governments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t block what Israel is doing, if we don\u2019t block trade, the distribution of weapons and everything else with Israel, we will not ever achieve anything,\u201d said Walter Montagnoli, national secretary of the CUB union, who joined a march in Milan.<\/p>\n

Premier Giorgia Meloni<\/a> condemned violent clashes sparked by some protesters as \u201cshameful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cViolence and destruction have nothing to do with solidarity and won\u2019t change a thing in the lives of people in Gaza,\u201d she wrote on X.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s U.N. General Assembly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s retaliatory offensive over the past 23 months has killed more than 65,100 people<\/a> in Gaza, according to Gaza\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow AP\u2019s war coverage at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/israel-hamas-war<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROME (AP) \u2014 Thousands of protesters and strikers calling for solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza took to the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":246666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[109821,8697,4526,57,37440,4527,3497,3462,373,2219,3493,24963,3463,70415,50,9598,402,34294,25680,131073,103,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-246665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-bologna","9":"tag-european-union","10":"tag-gaza-strip","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-giorgia-meloni","13":"tag-hamas","14":"tag-humanitarian-crises","15":"tag-israel-government","16":"tag-israel-hamas-war","17":"tag-italy","18":"tag-italy-government","19":"tag-labor-unions","20":"tag-mideast-wars","21":"tag-milan","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-palestinian-territories-government","24":"tag-protests-and-demonstrations","25":"tag-rome","26":"tag-transportation-and-shipping","27":"tag-walter-montagnoli","28":"tag-world","29":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115248790594467877","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}