ROME — Since becoming Italy’s prime minister three years ago, Giorgia Meloni has rarely changed course. But the turmoil in Gaza — and the massive wave of pro-Palestine protests it has sparked across Italy — may be forcing her to recalibrate.
Ms. Meloni is under pressure after a series of massive pro-Palestinian protests and nationwide strikes. The largest march, earlier this month, is estimated to have involved as many as 2 million protesters — the largest in Italy since demonstrations against the Iraq war in 2003.
Protesters are calling for Italy to join the growing list of countries that recognize a Palestinian state, something Ms. Meloni — who has long been seen as an ally of U.S. President Trump and one of Europe’s leading conservatives — recently said she is considering.
But they also want Italy to back a sanctions regime against Israel, restrict arms sales to the country, support a proposal for a war crimes investigation and dramatically increase humanitarian aid for Gaza.
“The direction Italy takes now is not just about Gaza,” Marco Malvezzi, a graduate student in biology who was among the protesters at the Oct. 4 rally in Rome. “This is about the kind of country we want to be, whether we will be on the right side of history or not.”
Until now, Ms. Meloni’s foreign policy has been defined by a degree of consistency that has more often driven European Union positions than followed them. In July, Ms. Meloni was on the cover of Time, under the headline “Where Giorgia Meloni is leading Europe.”
The Italian leader has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine, managed close alignment with Washington, promoted what she calls “traditional family values,” and has instituted often controversial deterrents to mass migration to Europe from Africa and the Middle East. She’s earned a reputation as a fiery orator and ideological purist.
“Meloni came to power at a time when factors like the end of the pandemic and the ineffectiveness of her right-of-center rivals helped her,” Franco Pavoncello, a political scientist and the president of John Cabot University in Rome, told the Washington Times. “Her consistency has helped her stay the course, but that may be coming to an end.”
Ms. Meloni — who often invokes Italy’s Christian roots — has held pro-Israel views dating back to before she came to power, and since taking office she has been accused of implementing anti-Islam policies at home.
Leaders within her coalition have largely toed the line.
Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini of the anti-migrant Lega party has a similar view, calling Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu the architect of the current ceasefire. Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani of the center-right Forza Italia party said he’d support recognizing a Palestinian state as long as the new state simultaneously recognized Israel.
“If there’s a Palestinian state that does not recognize Israel, then it means the problem has not been solved,” Mr. Tajani has said.
But public opinion in Italy is going the other way: nearly two in three Italians believe Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza, almost half say they would support an economic boycott of Israel, and around 15 percent said that violence against Jews was “justifiable.” Suddenly, what had been a distant geopolitical issue has become a domestic fault line.
Without a policy shift, Ms. Meloni risks isolation within the European Union and an erosion of domestic support significant enough to put her up-to-now stable government at risk.
It’s all new territory for Ms. Meloni, 48, who has built her career on conviction rather than compromise.
Born in a working-class neighborhood in Rome, Ms. Meloni climbed through the ranks of a second-tier political party built on the ruins of Benito Mussolini’s fascists. In 2014, she became leader of that party, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), and she slowly built it into a national power.
Oct. 22 marked the third anniversary of her rise to power. In a traditionally unstable political system like Italy’s, that’s enough to make her government’s longevity the country’s third longest in the 80 years since the end of World War II.
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