NAPLES, Italy—Through the last match for the scudetto, Italy’s most coveted soccer prize, in Could, supporters of SSC Napoli paraded their workforce’s gentle blue flags alongside Palestinian flags and keffiyehs as they marched by means of the port metropolis’s slender alleyways.
For almost two years, the colours of the Palestinian flag—purple, white, inexperienced, and black—have been displayed within the entrance row of many public occasions in Naples, from soccer matches to concert events to neighborhood gatherings. Eating places and bookstores in outdated alleys downtown carry watermelon stickers of their home windows, a nod to the flag within the metropolis’s most visited quarters.
NAPLES, Italy—Through the last match for the scudetto, Italy’s most coveted soccer prize, in Could, supporters of SSC Napoli paraded their workforce’s gentle blue flags alongside Palestinian flags and keffiyehs as they marched by means of the port metropolis’s slender alleyways.
For almost two years, the colours of the Palestinian flag—purple, white, inexperienced, and black—have been displayed within the entrance row of many public occasions in Naples, from soccer matches to concert events to neighborhood gatherings. Eating places and bookstores in outdated alleys downtown carry watermelon stickers of their home windows, a nod to the flag within the metropolis’s most visited quarters.
Naples has been on the forefront of Europe’s citizen-led actions in assist of Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. Whereas far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has constantly voiced her assist for the Israeli authorities over the previous two years, at the same time as she has sometimes condemned its army operations in Gaza, Neapolitans have been amongst Palestinians’ most vocal allies on the continent.
In September 2024, Vincenzo De Luca, the president of Campania—the southern Italian area whose capital is Naples—grew to become the first Italian elected official to name Israel’s battle in Gaza a “genocide.” And Naples’s metropolis council authorised a movement to formally acknowledge a Palestinian state in Could, lengthy earlier than the nationwide authorities started contemplating doing so.
“Naples and Palestine go aspect by aspect. The town’s insurgent soul is similar to the Palestinian one,” stated Maisa al-Hassan, a Palestinian dentist who moved to Naples for college within the late Nineteen Eighties. “Right here, we’ve at all times discovered empathy and solidarity, as a result of we share an analogous love for our land that we at all times really feel the necessity to shield and liberate from oppressors.”
Protesters maintain an indication studying “Tutto il mondo è Palestina” (“The entire world is Palestine”) throughout an indication towards the battle in Gaza, in Naples on Sept. 16. Ivan Romano/Getty Pictures
Neapolitans have lengthy felt a particular solidarity with Palestinians. In current many years, Naples’s historic middle has grow to be a type of open-air museum of the Palestinian wrestle, with dozens of murals by world-renowned artivists Ciro Cerullo (often called Jorit) and Eduardo Castaldo telling the story of Palestinian resistance.
A number of the murals merely depict vital Palestinian figures, resembling Palestine Liberation Group chief Yasser Arafat and a younger activist named Ahed Tamimi. Others are extra elaborate: an older Neapolitan girl splashing Israel Protection Forces troopers with water and a collage combining pictures of historic antisemitic propaganda from World Conflict II with scenes from modern-day Israel.
“Since I used to be 13 years outdated, I keep in mind that right here in Naples, Palestine was perceived because the image of all world injustices at each political demonstration and used as a metaphor for our personal social struggles,” Jorit stated.
In line with Claudia Fauzia, a Sicilian knowledgeable on southern Italian politics and identification, this connection is rooted in Neapolitans’ sense that they’ve, like Palestinians, traditionally been victims of oppression. The Italian south, Fauzia stated, has lengthy been “portrayed as backward … helpful solely as a reservoir of low-cost labor and a captive marketplace for consumption.”
The town’s historical past of resistance towards occupation dates again to the institution of the Italian state within the nineteenth century, when the northern kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont annexed the southern kingdom of Two Sicilies throughout a course of often called unification, which remains to be broadly seen as a conquest in Naples and the south immediately. For many years afterward, the northern military brutally repressed southern revolts that had been sparked partially by redistribution of wealth and agricultural assets from the south to the north.
Lower than a century later, on the peak of World Conflict II, civilians ousted Nazi forces occupying Naples with out the assistance of Allied forces in what later could be often called “the 4 days of Naples”—an episode usually referenced by pro-Palestinian protest leaders to assist spotlight a parallel historic tradition of resistance towards occupiers. Al-Hassan, who has taken half in lots of the protests, stated that because the metropolis’s first solidarity marches for Gaza after Oct. 7, “the mentioning of Naples’s personal previous could be a recurrent speech heard at protest squares.”
To this present day, southern Italy nonetheless has the nation’s highest charges of unemployment and poverty, and employees who flocked north looking for work have usually confronted discrimination.
A crowd fills a bridge in Naples on Sept. 14 throughout an indication in assist of the World Sumud Flotilla carrying help to Gaza.Alessio Paduano/Anadolu by way of Getty Pictures
Sofia Bacchini, a sociologist on the College of Naples whose analysis focuses on Palestinian scholar migration to Italy, stated that many southern Italian employees began to determine with Palestinians’ wrestle within the postwar interval, particularly after the 1967 Six-Day Conflict, an Arab-Israeli battle that cemented Israel’s army dominance within the area.
1000’s of Palestinian college students migrated to Italy after 1967, inspired by the nation’s open borders and scholarship alternatives, in addition to the federal government’s wider pro-Palestinian stance on the time. Their political activism led to the institution of Italy’s Palestinian scholar union, which Bacchini stated is the biggest Palestinian college motion in Europe. The motion discovered many supporters exterior the Arab neighborhood, particularly in Naples—the place, in line with Bacchini, unofficial knowledge exhibits that round 1,500 Palestinians reside immediately.
“The native solidarity for Palestine amongst residents and civil society organizations was eased by political and institutional backing in Naples in recent times,” Bacchini stated.
Naples has largely been led by leftist governments since 1993. In 2005, it grew to become a sister metropolis of Nablus, a metropolis within the occupied West Financial institution whose title, like Naples, can be derived from the Greek phrase neapolis, or new metropolis. In 2013, then-Mayor Luigi de Magistris made Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, an honorary citizen of Naples and, in return, accepted honorary Palestinian citizenship by receiving a Palestinian passport.
Individuals on balconies show a banner decrying NATO and the battle in Gaza throughout a protest at Naples Metropolis Corridor on Could 27. Ivan Romano/Getty Pictures
Current polling exhibits that Italian public opinion is catching as much as that of Neapolitans. In October 2024, the Italian Institute for Worldwide Political Research discovered that 35 % of the Italians it surveyed deemed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s authorities chargeable for the battle. A June ballot by YouGov confirmed a big lower in Italians’ assist for Israel, with solely 6 % of respondents believing that Israel’s assaults in Gaza are justified.
That’s mirrored within the enormous turnout for the Sept. 22 and Oct. 3 nationwide strikes to protest for Gaza, which largely shut down the nation. In Naples, the place turnout was among the many highest in Italy, protesters managed to halt operations on the metropolis’s important prepare station. Total, greater than 1 million Italians marched down streets, squares, and highways throughout the nation, displaying assist and solidarity for Gaza and demanding that Meloni’s authorities denounce the genocide there.
Presently, almost 9 in 10 Italians need their nation to acknowledge a Palestinian state, which Meloni nonetheless refuses to do, claiming in late September that it “could be a hazardous transfer.”
A person wears a blue shirt with the phrases “Napoli 4 Gaza” in reference to SSC Napoli’s 4th Scudetto victory throughout a protest in Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples on Could 27. Ivan Romano/Getty Pictures
Right now, the center of Naples’s pro-Palestinian motion is the Handala Ali Cultural Heart, a neighborhood area that seeks to unfold consciousness of the Arab-Israeli battle and Palestinian tradition. The middle, based in 2021, is positioned downtown within the working-class neighborhood of Forcella, in the identical spot as the previous bazaar of Palestinian refugee Ali Oraney. For 40 years, till his loss of life in 2020, Oraney’s bazaar was a gathering level for leftist college students and activists, who would usually come to talk to him about life in Palestine.
Right now, the renovated area has retained a comfortable, open ambiance in one of many metropolis’s busiest areas. Each September, it hosts a small movie and tradition competition that screens unbiased Palestinian motion pictures free of charge and hosts public talks and debates.
“Downtown Naples has closely been impacted by overtourism just lately,” stated Giulia al-Omleh, an Italian Palestinian scholar and activist with the middle. “We thought this represented the right place … for open-air debates, reveals, and lectures, each for its symbolism of a previous epicenter of the pro-Palestine scholar motion in Naples, but additionally as a result of it’s a present strategic level the place many individuals go by.”
Al-Omleh, who’s each Neapolitan and Palestinian, acknowledges that regardless of the numerous parallels between the 2 communities, the injustice that Palestinians face each day is much larger than Neapolitans can think about. “Right here, individuals are not at the moment uncovered to the occupation of a international entity, to mass displacement, or fixed destruction,” she stated. Nonetheless, “the historical past of this metropolis is inseparable from its rebellious nature revolting towards grasping bullies.”
And for a lot of pro-Palestinian Neapolitans, it’s extra vital than ever to protect the town’s rebellious spirit immediately. “This is likely one of the most visited cities on the planet,” Castaldo stated. “Reclaiming it as an anti-Zionist area means reclaiming its identification of a spot with a deep sense of social justice.”
