Tens of thou­sands of demon­stra­tors marched through the streets of Rome on Sat­ur­day against the war in Gaza in a protest called by Italy’s main op­po­si­tion par­ties, who ac­cuse the right-wing gov­ern­ment of be­ing too silent.

Pro­test­ers held a ban­ner read­ing “Stop the mas­sacre, stop com­plic­i­ty!” at the start of the march, which moved peace­ful­ly through the cen­ter of Rome amid a mas­sive dis­play of rain­bow, Pales­tin­ian and po­lit­i­cal par­ty flags.

The protest at­tract­ed a di­verse crowd from across the coun­try, in­clud­ing many fam­i­lies with chil­dren. Ac­cord­ing to or­ga­niz­ers, up to 300,000 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ral­ly or­ga­nized by the left­ist op­po­si­tion to ask the gov­ern­ment for a clear po­si­tion on the con­flict in Gaza.

“This is an an enor­mous pop­u­lar re­sponse to say enough to the mas­sacre of Pales­tini­ans and the crimes of (Is­raeli leader Ben­jamin) Ne­tanyahu’s gov­ern­ment,” the leader of Italy’s cen­ter-left De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, El­ly Schlein, told re­porters at the march.

“There is an­oth­er Italy that doesn’t re­main silent as the Mel­oni gov­ern­ment does,” she said, re­fer­ring to Prime Min­is­ter Gior­gia Mel­oni.

Mel­oni was re­cent­ly pushed by the op­po­si­tion to pub­licly con­demn Ne­tanyahu’s of­fen­sive in Gaza, but many ob­servers con­sid­ered her crit­i­cism too timid.

”(The Ital­ian gov­ern­ment) is not re­act­ing de­spite an ab­nor­mal mas­sacre, de­spite an ab­solute­ly cru­el and in­ap­pro­pri­ate re­ac­tion. The (Ital­ian) gov­ern­ment re­mains silent,” said Nadin Un­ali, a Tunisian demon­stra­tor at the march.

People and center-left political leaders march during a pro-Palestinians demonstration in Rome, Saturday, June 7, 2025. (Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP)

Cecilia Fabiano

Ear­li­er this week, the Ital­ian pre­mier urged Is­rael to im­me­di­ate­ly halt its mil­i­tary cam­paign in Gaza, say­ing its at­tacks had grown dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly and should be brought to an end to pro­tect civil­ians.

Is­rael faces mount­ing in­ter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism for its of­fen­sive and pres­sure to let aid in­to Gaza dur­ing a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis.

Gaza has been un­der an Is­raeli block­ade for near­ly three months, with ex­perts warn­ing that many of its 2 mil­lion res­i­dents are at high risk of famine.

The war broke out on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led mil­i­tants launched a sur­prise at­tack on Is­rael, killing some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and ab­duct­ed 251 hostages. They are still hold­ing 56 hostages, around a third of them be­lieved to be alive.

Since then, Is­rael has killed more than 54,000 Pales­tini­ans in its mil­i­tary cam­paign, pri­mar­i­ly women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to the Gaza Health Min­istry, which does not dis­tin­guish be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its fig­ures. —ROME (AP)

_________

Sto­ry by GI­A­DA ZAM­PANO | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists Pao­lo Lu­cariel­lo and Francesco Sportel­li con­tributed to this re­port.