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In 2014, during the Israeli attack on Gaza, which killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, Giorgia Meloni, then a member of the Italian Parliament, wrote on social media: “Another massacre of children in Gaza. No cause is justifiable when innocent blood is shed.”<\/p>\n
More than a decade later, that moral clarity is still nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n
As Prime Minister, Meloni’s comments on Gaza have become increasingly cautious and evasive, marked by a “on the one hand, on the other” tone that frustrates many Italians. His address on war against Iran last March captured that ambiguity perfectly. She declared that she “neither condones nor condemns” the conflict, a sentence that managed to confuse many people while clarifying nothing.<\/p>\n
So when Italy announced earlier this month that it was suspending the automatic renewal of its defense agreement with Israel, many observers hailed it as a turning point: evidence, perhaps, that Meloni’s government was finally bowing under the moral weight of Gaza’s destruction. Some hoped that this gesture, no matter how cautious, was a rare nod to the conscience of Italians who had been marching for months demanding an end to the war.<\/p>\n
Yet it is impossible to ignore the sequence that led to the suspension. This did not happen after the killing of approximately 75,000 Palestinians, nor after the destruction of Gaza’s hospitals, schools and mosques. Meloni took action only after Israeli forces fired warning shots at a convoy of Italian UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, a sequel to the 2024 incident in which two UNIFIL bases manned by Italian personnel were attacked by Israeli forces.<\/p>\n
This pattern is telling. For the Italian government to move this was not a humanitarian disaster, but another direct insult to Italian personnel.<\/p>\n
The same reaction was seen when United States President Donald Trump insulted Pope Leo XIV. Then Meloni issued a rare criticism of Trump, calling his words “unacceptable.” Until then, he had found his conduct in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela and Lebanon quite tolerable. Once again, calculations struck: She could not afford to alienate the conservative Catholic voters who are the backbone of her political base.<\/p>\n
Meloni’s foreign policy follows this script of moral performance. Italy is the only Western European and G7 nation to also participate as an “observer” on Trump’s so-called peace board, a body that many Italian commentators have derided as cynical theater, calling Italy a “vassal of the United States.”<\/p>\n
A European citizens’ petition gathered over one million signatures calling on the EU to suspend its cooperation agreement with Israel for “crimes in Gaza”; Italy came second in participation after France. This surge in public protest came after last October’s general strike in solidarity with the Global Sumud Flotilla, when more than two million Italians filled the streets to demand what many consider to be a massacre.<\/p>\n
But the government’s symbolic gestures routinely fall apart as soon as they make headlines. Within days of suspending the defense deal, Italy quietly joined with Germany to once again block the EU’s attempt to suspend the trade deal with Israel.<\/p>\n
Meloni’s Italy, it turns out, performs dissent but practices obedience.<\/p>\n
Just like in January 2024, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani loudly announced a moratorium on arms exports to Israel, but Defense Minister Guido Crosetto made it clear that the moratorium only applies to new licenses, not existing contracts.<\/p>\n