Riprendiamo volentieri dal sito “Rebel” questo intervento di Lucia Pradella, sul rapporto tra il moto di solidarietà alla Palestina e gli scioperi operai degli ultimi due anni in Italia, che ripercorre con oggettività quello che è accaduto, andando alle radici dell’attuale, improvvisa, grande espansione di questo moto. Lei stessa introduce lo scritto in questo modo: “All’indomani del grande sciopero generale per la Palestina in Italia, c’è la tendenza o a dire che sia nato dal nulla, o a cancellare il lavoro dei gruppi giovanili palestinesi e dei lavoratori immigrati del SI Cobas, che ha indetto quattro scioperi generali per la Palestina dal novembre 2023. In questo articolo mi baso sulla mia ricerca sul movimento di solidarietà con la Palestina in Italia e rifletto sulle prospettive future.” (Red.)
Block Everything: Workers’ Strikes and Palestine Solidarity in Italy
Lucia Pradella writes of the significance of the huge ongoing strikes in Italy against Israel’s genocide and describes how they have been met with state repression. Despite some political disagreements within the movement, the workers have managed to stop arms and goods bound for Israel, provided much needed support for Palestinians, and point the way forward for the global Palestinian movement.
written by Lucia Pradella September 25, 2025
The strength of the Palestinian resistance to genocide and the resonance of the Global Sumud Flotilla — itself inspired by the principle of Palestinian steadfastness — have galvanised the youth, workers, and unions in Italy. On Monday 22 September, an unprecedented general strike for Palestine brought parts of the country to a standstill, heeding the call of Genoa’s Autonomous Dockworkers’ Collective (CALP/USB) to “block everything.” The strike was called in solidarity with Palestine and the Flotilla, demanding sanctions against and the rupture of all ties with the Zionist entity, and opposing Italy’s complicity as Israel’s key ally and third-largest arms supplier.
About a million people joined the walk-out called by grassroots unions (USB, CUB, ADL Cobas, SGB and SI Cobas). Dockers and logistics workers led blockades to stop arms and goods bound for Israel, shutting port gates in Genoa, Salerno, Venice, and Livorno. Transport was affected nationwide – buses and metro lines halted, highways and stations blocked. While around 30,000 public sector workers participated, some schools and universities closed down. Hundreds of thousands marched in over 80 cities. In Milan, police assaulted protesters seeking to block the central station. Despite repression, including tear gas and water cannons, the mobilisation exceeded expectations, drawing many workers and young people into the movement for the first time.
Sensing the momentum, CGIL, the country’s largest trade-union federation, called its own strike for Friday 19 September: two or more hours nationally, longer in some regions, with metalwork, construction, and service workers staging four-hour stoppages. This last-minute attempt to weaken the grassroots action meant that, because of legal restrictions, public service workers were barred from participating. Although its platform was narrower – limited to humanitarian corridors, the cancellation of all commercial and military deals, and recognition of a Palestinian state – the strike still mobilised thousands nationwide; workplaces reported 100 percent adherence and public service employees wore black armbands in solidarity.
Roots in workplace struggle
This general strike did not come out of nowhere. It’s the fifth general strike for Palestine in Italy since October 2023. Led by Palestinian organisations like Italy’s Young Palestinians and the Arab-Palestinian Democratic Union, along with rank-and-file union SI Cobas, (strong in logistics), the pro-Palestine movement has prioritised support for the Palestinian resistance through material disruptions to the supply chain of genocide. By centering Palestine in workplace struggles, it has shown that anti-imperialism is inseparable from the fight against exploitation and racism at home.
Opposed to the inter-imperialist NATO-Russia war in Ukraine, on 21 October 2023 SI Cobas organised a protest at the Ghedi military base. The prominence of Palestinian flags showed the strength of feelings among its members, many from North Africa and the Middle East, for whom Palestine is lived, and understood, through a common language of colonialism, dispossession, and resistance. On 17 November SI Cobas responded to the appeal of the Palestinian trade-unions and called the first general strike for Palestine, with workers and Palestinian groups blocking an Israeli ZIM ship in Salerno and picketing Tekapp in Modena, a producer of military electronics for Israel. The following day thousands marched in Bologna.
On 23 February, SI Cobas called a second general strike in support of Palestine, in collaboration with Young Palestinians and with the support of most grassroots unions, also involving 20,000 public service workers. The national demonstration in Milan drew around 50,000 participants – the largest grassroots mobilisation before the summer of 2025 – and was part of an International Day of Action against the wars in the capital.
Tactics escalated through the spring: blockades, weekly pickets at utility outlets, occupations of train stations, and protests outside arms factories like Leonardo and the national broadcaster RAI. In Genoa, sustained public pressure by solidarity groups and SI Cobas forced municipal energy company Iren to cancel a contract with the Israeli company Mekorot. 8 March 2024, SI Cobas struck again, branding Leonardo a “military death factory” and directly linking International Women’s Day to the fight against militarism and Zionist violence.
SI Cobas members actively supported and joined student encampments. Inspired by them, striking Dachser-Fercam workers at Bologna Interporto in May demanded a ban on handling goods to and from the Zionist entity and won, securing the clause in their contract. That same month, workers in Piacenza organised a shipment of roughly 19 tonnes of essentials bound for Gaza via the Egypt–Rafah crossing, and have continued to organise material support ever since.
On 24 June 2024, in collaboration with Palestinian organisations, SI Cobas called a national logistics strike that culminated the following day in the blockade of Genoa’s port. From dawn, workers and activists shut down the San Benigno, Albertazzi, and Etiopia gates before marching to the heavily policed Ponente gate, bringing much of the port to a halt. SI Cobas’s decision to strike in support of the blockade led to friction with CALP/USB, highlighting divergences over tactics, strategy, and political orientation. A Palestinian activist told me:
“Even if these strikes were limited in scope, they had enormous value because they introduced a method that can be taken up again. We started with small actions, and these actions grew. Even when they weren’t immediately replicated, the watchword of these blockades passed on, and that’s extremely important.”
The state’s reaction confirms this assessment. Activists link the police measures against pickets at Leonardo and RAI to the government’s push for a new “security decree.” The draft bill proposed to expand police powers, introduce penalties of up to 20 years for blocking infrastructure, criminalise revolts in immigrant detention centres and prisons, and punish “terrorism in speech.” Significantly, Interior Minister Piantedosi explicitly justified the decree by citing logistics blockades and SI Cobas as threats to be neutralised.
Palestine and the struggle against repression
Instead of uniting to confront this escalation, divisions within the movement limited its potential. Over the summer, Palestine solidarity converged with grassroots opposition to the draft bill, leading to the creation of the Rete Liberi/e di lottare. Even CGIL and UIL members began mobilising against it. For many activists, this made the Palestine-led 5 October Rome march for Palestine and Lebanon an even more crucial step. But the government banned the march. After the ban, some Palestinian community leaders (linked to the Palestinian Authority) distanced themselves, citing tactical concerns, while others insisted the march had to proceed, arguing that what was really at stake was unconditional support for Palestinian resistance and a refusal to normalise the occupation.
The march, which went ahead despite the ban, proved protesters’ determination in the face of unprecedented repression: police stopped and searched over 1,600 protesters at train stations, toll booths, and bus routes, issuing 51 expulsion orders from the capital. The protest itself was confined to a heavily militarised square, while four people were arrested amid charges and provocations. Activists warned that this was just a preview of the decree’s wider repressive powers. The spirit of defiance carried into the following weeks, culminating in the 18 October national strike called by SI Cobas and the Rete Liberi/e di lottare and the 19 October national demonstration against war, repression, and the new security bill.
Meanwhile, a network linked to the parliamentary left emerged, organising large demonstrations against the draft bill but refusing to connect them to Palestine, the war economy, or disruptive action. Divisions within the pro-Palestine movement erupted ahead of an assembly organised by Potere al Popolo, Rete dei Comunisti and USB in early November. Young Palestinians refused to participate. In an open letter, they accused the organisers of sidelining Palestinian groups and of seeking to create an Italian coordination that would decide strategies “as if Palestine were an external cause.” Preparations for the 29 November general strike exposed these splits further: CGIL and UIL called a general strike against the government’s budget and the draft bill, while SI Cobas, CUB and SGB — but not USB — struck on a platform linking opposition to the war economy and repression to solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon. On the eve of the march, Palestinian groups intervened to prevent fragmentation and secure unequivocal support for the resistance, leading to a single march of over 30,000 people tied to the general strike the day before.
The failure to create a united front from below, rooted in workplace resistance, ultimately weakened these mobilisations. On 11 April 2025 SI Cobas called a general strike that combined workplace demands — higher wages, shorter hours, a ban on layoffs and outsourcing — with political ones: opposing European rearmament, state repression, and Italy’s complicity in the genocide. In collaboration with Palestinian organisations and Naples’ unemployed movement, the strike hit key logistics hubs in Milan and Bologna, where a six-hour blockade at the Interporto caused long truck queues and highway disruption, while protesters targeted ports in Genoa, Naples and the Rubiera hub in Reggio Emilia, used by Maersk to ship F-35 components for Leonardo. The strike was followed on 12 April by a big national demonstration in Milan, once again met by brutal police repression, including by agents wearing neo-Nazi insignia – likely celebrating the expanded powers they had been granted by the new decree, which had come into force that day.
From blockades to general strike(s)
State repression, however, could not stop the growing outrage at Israel’s genocide, its aggressions against seven countries, and Italy’s direct complicity. In June, dockworkers in France and Italy successfully stopped around 14 tonnes of munitions bound for Israel, extending a cycle of coordinated port blockades across Europe. In September, a newly formed committee of dockworkers in Ravenna led to local authorities stopping two containers full of explosives directed to Haifa. In this context, parliamentary opposition parties — the Democratic Party (PD), Five Star Movement, and the Greens and Left Alliance (AVS) — organised a large march in Rome in early June to denounce Netanyahu’s government and call for “peace.” Meanwhile, police in Milan banned a Palestine-led demonstration demanding an end to Italy’s ties with Israel.
Ahead of NATO’s June summit in The Hague – which committed member states to raise military spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 – USB, SI Cobas and other grassroots unions organised a general strike linking war and genocide abroad to the war economy at home: attacks on wages and conditions, the dismantling of social protection, rising poverty, criminalisation of dissent, intensified state racism and police violence. As a SI Cobas coordinator explained, the state is especially targeting immigrant workers, who are at the forefront of Italy’s labour struggles and the Palestine solidarity movement:
“As conflict intensifies, they escalate laws that repress and target immigrants. It’s no coincidence that we are the ones being targeted. “
The state’s strategy was clear: target immigrant workers in logistics to prevent radicalisation from spreading across the organised working class. Yet on 20 June that barrier cracked: metalworkers also struck for wages and conditions, and in Bologna 10,000 demonstrators left the authorised route and occupied the ring road, paralysing one of the region’s key arteries for about 45 minutes. Police threatened to prosecute them under the new decree – showing how quickly labour dissent can break through the limits set by union leaderships, and how repression is fanning, not stopping, resistance.
As one activist put it: “Palestine disrupts everything, radicalises the youth.” It was precisely this potential that mainstream parties and union leaders rushed to contain. On 21 June, Rome hosted two separate marches against war, rearmament and Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Stop Rearm Europe: Welfare, not Warfare – backed by mainstream parties and CGIL – drew over 100,000 people, but on a platform of generic pacifism that carefully avoided opposing NATO. Disarmiamoli! – largely a Potere al Popolo and USB initiative – was sharper in its anti-NATO slogans yet offered no critique of rival powers like Russia and China. Palestinian organisations and SI Cobas did not formally join either. This revealed both the movement’s ongoing fragmentation and the fact that, after 18 months of blockades and strikes, opposition parties had been forced into the streets – only to channel the anger into safe, electoral opposition and demands for a stronger role for the EU.
The Global Sumud Flotilla swelled numbers and visibility but also risked turning Palestinian liberation into a humanitarian cause managed by NGOs and mainstream parties, relieving pressure not only on Western governments but also on the so-called BRICS, also complicit, while bypassing Palestinian organisations. A young activist told me that without CALP’s participation and political stance, the Flotilla would have been a step backwards for the pro-Palestine movement in Italy, which had centred strikes, blockades and solidarity with the resistance. The movement has directly challenged centre-left politicians seeking to exploit the moment to present themselves as allies. In Genoa, activists confronted them, chanting “Zionists, out of the square!” A SI Cobas coordinator told me:
“Unity must be built among workers, not with the bosses, the Zionist mayors and those who supported the genocide and voted unanimously for the Italy-led naval mission ASPIDES in the Red Sea against the Yemeni resistance.”
The eruption of strength, anger, and youth on 22 September showed that the tide is shifting. The movement has grown beyond the ability of opposition parties, union leaderships, or the state to contain. Once again, Palestine has become the rallying cause of the oppressed and exploited masses in our era. It belongs to no union or party but to the masses themselves, who must take the struggle into their own hands and build real unity from below. This breakthrough was no miracle: it was the outcome of two sustained years of Palestinian and worker-led organising, confirming that workers’ power is decisive in confronting Zionism and imperialism in the West. In Livorno, a three-day blockade forced authorities to announce that the US military ship SLNC Severn would not dock. In Salerno, an unprecedented blockade of the container terminal forced its operator into negotiations over suspending sailings to Israel and cancelling contracts with ZIM and any complicit company. As Israel escalates its genocide and attacks the Flotilla, escalation is urgent: we must work towards a unified general strike, coordinated internationally and capable of confronting imperialism at its roots. Solidarity must become disruption everywhere: we must “block everything” until Palestine is free.