Associated Press/WSWS/People’s Dispatch || More than 2 million people across Italy rallied in over 100 cities Friday for a one-day general strike to support the residents of Gaza and the Global Sumud Flotilla humanitarian aid mission. The strike, organized by the Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) together with the Unione Sindacale Italiana (USI) and the Federazione Italiana Sindacati Intercategoriali (FI-SI), brought transport, schools, public services and logistics to a standstill across the country.
Members of the dockworkers’ collective CALP in Genoa vowed to halt port operations if Israel attacked or blocked the fleet, as the Global Sumud Flotilla prepared to launch earlier this month. Following continuous local mobilizations and public assemblies, they made good on their promise. Thousands shut down Genoa’s port from the early morning hours, joined by workers in the strategic harbors of Trieste, Venice, and Livorno. Rallies erupted in Bologna, Milan, Turin, Naples, across Sicily and Sardinia, and in dozens of other localities, where teachers, parents, and students walked out of schools together, chanting for a free Palestine.
According to the CGIL union, 300,000 people marched through the streets of Rome alone, while the national average participation in the general strike stood at around 60%, halting all the main services in key sectors including transportation and schools. Rail service on the national Gruppo FS Italiane network was reduced to minimal legally mandated windows. In Rome, Metro Line C was shut entirely; Lines A and B ran at reduced frequency.
In Venice, the Vaporetto waterborne network nearly ground to a halt. In Bologna, the airport express link to Marconi was suspended. In Florence, protesters approached the gates of the Italian national soccer team’s training center to demand its upcoming World Cup qualifier against Israel not be played because of the war in Gaza. In city after city—Turin, Genoa, Bari, Naples—commuters found their morning and evening routines disrupted by a working class refusing, for the fourth time in nine months, to simply absorb the costs of war and austerity in silence.
Italian unions proclaimed the strike after the Global Sumud Flotilla that was trying to break Israel’s naval blockade to deliver aid to Gaza was intercepted by Israeli naval forces Wednesday night. Protests and demonstrations have sprung up all over Europe and globally since then, but they have been particularly strong in Italy. “The call came from Genoa’s dockworkers, and here we are: we’ve blocked everything,” the protesters proclaimed. Among those leading the crowd were firefighters’ union representatives, who told il manifesto: “First responders will never be complicit in genocide, and we are protesting a government that is entrapping us in rearmament.”
Under the slogan “Nemmeno un chiodo per guerre e genocidio”—“Not even a nail for wars and genocide”—the union connected Italy’s planned increase in military spending to 5 percent of GDP directly to the gutting of social infrastructure. In its call for the General Strike the USB states: “We bring the country to a standstill to make it clear that no worker, no student, and no region can be dragged into this economy of death.”
It calls on the Italian government to “sever all diplomatic, economic, commercial and military ties with the terrorist state of Israel,” denounces the United States for its aggression against Iran and condemns the Meloni government and the European Union as accomplices. It ends with the call: “On 18 May we bring the country to a standstill to protest against war, genocide, rearmament and repression. For wages, welfare, healthcare, education, rights and democracy.”
Speaking from the Genoa blockade, Marta Collot of the left party Potere al Popolo stressed that the strike demonstrated concrete solidarity with Palestinians, affirmed support for their legitimate resistance, and denounced European complicity in genocide. “Embargo and sanctions: these must be our priorities,” Collot said.
Authorities responded to the massive mobilization with violence. Police forces used water cannons against protesters demanding an end to Italy’s arms trade with Israel and calling for severing all political and economic ties. Despite growing public pressure, Giorgia Meloni’s government has refused to act against Israel, instead continuing communications with Israeli officials and arms deliveries through the state-linked company Leonardo.
Mass popular action tells of the anger sweeping the working class. Workers understand viscerally that every euro allocated to military budgets is a euro stripped from wages and services. In the face of ongoing militarist austerity, the USB’s demands are substantive: the introduction of a legally mandated minimum wage, the restoration of the scala mobile wage-indexing mechanism abolished under earlier capitalist governments, a windfall tax on energy and banking conglomerates, and the defense of public healthcare, pensions, education and housing against a budget that funnels tens of billions toward rearmament.
The political representatives of capital rush to stomp or recouperate worker autonomy
Italy’s conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had sharply criticized the strike. She anticipated it would cause widespread disruption across the country and said it was politically motivated and targeted her right-wing government.
Meloni had already denounced the flotilla mission as “dangerous and irresponsible” at the European Council in Copenhagen. Foreign Minister Tajani did the mere minimum demanded by protocol: he dispatched consular instructions to embassies in Tel Aviv, Ankara and Nicosia and requested Israeli assurances regarding the “safety and dignity” of detainees—while carefully avoiding any criticism of the naval blockade itself.
Matteo Salvini of the ultra-right Lega, who has previously used his powers as a minister to order striking transport workers back to work, declined to do so on this occasion—not out of respect for the workers’ cause, but because the government was simultaneously under pressure from road haulers threatening their own stoppage over diesel price rises.
The opposition parties rushed to register their outrage. Democratic Party (PD) Secretary Elly Schlein called the seizure “yet another act of piracy in international waters by the Israeli government” and demanded that the EU intervene. Five Star Movement (M5S) leader Giuseppe Conte was more pointed: “Perhaps peace was sabotaged by those who continued to do business with Israel, by those who pretended not to see an ongoing genocide.”
Green-Left Alliance (AVS) leaders Nicola Fratoianni and Angelo Bonelli demanded “concrete acts against the fascist government of Netanyahu.” M5S parliamentary deputy Dario Carotenuto was himself aboard one of the flotilla vessels and sent a video message before communications were cut, reporting Israeli warships surrounding the fleet.
These statements should be taken seriously as evidence of the depth of the political crisis—but not as a sign of genuine political opposition. Conte was prime minister in a coalition with the far-right Lega that supported NATO and the EU and backed anti-immigrant decrees and austerity. The PD’s Jobs Act destroyed labor protections. And Fratoianni’s party operates entirely within the framework of bourgeois parliamentary politics and NATO membership.
Their expressions of outrage over the flotilla are intended to absorb the resistance. They fear that working class opposition targets the root cause: an imperialist world order, backed by Washington, Brussels and Rome, in which Israel’s blockade and bombardment of Gaza are not aberrations but an essential feature.
A sustained cycle of working class resistance
Today’s strike is the latest episode in a sustained cycle of working class resistance. The USB explicitly linked Monday’s action to the September 22, 2025 general strike, which marched under the slogan “blocchiamo tutto”—“block everything.”
That strike was itself ignited by Israel’s violent seizure of the original Global Sumud Flotilla, which provoked a million-strong demonstration in Rome on October 4, 2025—one of the most significant working class and popular eruptions in Italy in decades. In those weeks, dockworkers in Genoa, Livorno and Ancona refused to load weapons bound for Israel—a spontaneous rank-and-file act of class solidarity that forced even the CGIL bureaucrats to act.
Then came the November 28-29 general strikes against the 2026 budget and the CGIL’s own December 12 general strike. And now, May 18. This is not episodic. This is a class in the process of political awakening, striking repeatedly, with growing understanding, against the same enemy: a capitalist government that arms a genocide abroad while dismantling wages, services and rights at home.
The fact that the major CGIL, CISL and UIL confederations abstained from today’s strike is revealing, and deeply instructive. CGIL leader Maurizio Landini—whose former spokesperson Massimo Gibelli publicly declared he no longer recognized his own values in the organization—steered the confederation toward separate, sector-specific disputes, deliberately keeping out of a mobilization against war. This is the function of the union bureaucracy: to channel working class anger into safe corridors, away from any political confrontation with the capitalist state itself.
International solidarity is “alive and kicking”
The mass character of Monday’s strike likely shook much of Italy’s political class. In recent years, the government had passed measures to restrict demonstrations and downplayed the organizing capacity of trade unions and the left. Yet weeks of continuous protests culminating in the general strike undermined these efforts.
“Workers have returned to center stage and are calling on citizens, all citizens, to stand up. They are not doing so for a contract renewal but to demand justice for a distant and tormented people,” USB declared on the day of the strike. “In this age of selfishness and individualism, this seems unthinkable. But no, solidarity between peoples and brotherhood beyond borders are not dead and buried values; on the contrary, they are alive and kicking.”
For Potere al Popolo’s Giuliano Granato, the strike also captured broader anger. “Palestine has given a name to our discontent,” he told Peoples Dispatch. “The outrage, protest, and anger over the massacre of the Palestinian people has intersected with years of oppression, repression, and deteriorating material conditions. For young people in particular, there is the absence of a future, fear, and the awareness of living in societies where only the horrendously rich and powerful have a say.”
The momentum built by the strike is set to continue. Italian dockworkers will host an international sectoral meeting on September 26–27, bringing together trade unions capable of disrupting Europe’s arms flows to Israel. National demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine are also planned for October 4, as eyes remain fixed on the Global Sumud Flotilla. If Israel attempts to stop it, Italian workers have already shown they are ready to block the country – sending a signal that could inspire others to organize along the same lines.
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