Italy may be moving closer to recognition of Palestinian statehood, as its conditions appear close to being fulfilled, Palestine's de facto ambassador to Italy, Mona Abuamara, has told The National.
Speaking ahead of a visit by the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to Rome on November 7, Ms Abuamara said she hoped for an announcement soon. Along with Germany, Italy is one of the few western European states that refused to join a recent wave of recognition of Palestine statehood, despite large protests and polls showing a surge in pro-Palestinian sentiment.
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's conditions for recognition that must be met included the exclusion of Hamas from Gaza's governance and the return to Israel of all the hostages held in the enclave.
Ms Abuamara, who started her job in Rome in July after serving four years as head of the Palestinian mission in Canada, said “multiple factors” were helping Palestinian diplomats “push it through”.
“Among them is the activism on the ground, not to mention that at this point, Italy feels left out of how Europe is dealing with the Palestine question,” she said. “The Italian government, hopefully, will surprise us.”
Hamas has said it accepts the idea of not being represented on a board of Palestinian independent figures that is being set up to govern Gaza following US President Donald Trump's peace plan that was unveiled this month. Discussions are continuing about Hamas disarming.
All living hostages have been returned by Hamas to Israel, along with the remains of some others. The search for the remains of others continues. Israel has released thousands of Palestinian detainees, and the remains of others.
Search for remains
The process has been tense and difficult. Hamas on Wednesday called off the return of a body after Israeli shelling killed more than 100 Gazans – an event Washington has said does not constitute a breach of the ceasefire.
Ms Abuamara highlighted the difficulty of recovering remains in an enclave in which Israeli bombardments in Gaza have killed more than 68,600 Palestinians in two years.
Israeli forces launched strikes and ground offensives after Hamas-led militants attacked Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and abducting around 240.
The search for the remains of hostages has been hindered by further Israeli shelling and the deaths of those who knew where they were, said Ms Abuamara. Asking for more than “what is realistically possible” would mean “holding recognition hostage” to a situation beyond the control of Palestinians, she argued.
Recognition “is a right to self-determination, sovereignty and freedom, and it should not be conditioned on something that has got nothing to do with the rights of the Palestinian people”, Ms Abuamara said.
UN officials and human rights scholars have accused Israel of genocide and of orchestrating a famine in Gaza, which it denies.
Recognising Palestinian statehood would represent a major diplomatic shift for Italy which traditionally aligns its foreign policy closely on the US.
On October 15, Italy's Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said recognition was getting “closer” but did not offer more details. A few days earlier, at a conference on Gaza in Paris, Mr Tajani said Rome was interested in playing a role in the enclave's reconstruction.
“We always try to convey the world − to the West in general − that we, of course, appreciate the aid,” Ms Abuamara said. “We appreciate the notion of wanting to reconstruct Gaza, but without a political path, without an end to impunity and holding Israel accountable, we will always come back to wanting to organise aid conferences for Gaza. The cycle needs to be broken.”
Reconstruction questions
The UN has estimated the cost of rebuilding Gaza to be $70 billion. There is an expectation that it would be covered by the EU and Arab states. Israel should also pay, Ms Abuamara said, though this remains unlikely. “It's very easy, if it's someone else's effort and money, to keep breaking what others have paid for,” she said.
Last week, the EU decided to pause discussions on sanctions against Israel in order to support the US-brokered ceasefire. Ms Abuamara said it was “unfortunate” that they decided to reward Israel for stopping its aggression on Gaza instead of pushing for more.
“Our fight is still long,” she said. “We're not done, we know that Israel doesn't move forward if it's not held accountable. We will continue calling for the implementation of international law,” she added, referring to decisions issued on Israel and Palestine by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
Due to EU divisions over the conflict, some European countries have started looking into applying international law at national level − a move Italy has shied away from.
The Netherlands recently announced it would work on legislation to implement a July 2024 ICJ ruling banning imports of goods produced in settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.
Mr Abbas was scheduled to meet Ms Meloni at the UN General Assembly in September in New York, during which France and 10 other states recognised Palestine. However, he was denied a visa by US authorities.
“I hope that this would be an opportunity for Italy to take a step to assure us, as Palestinians and the world, of its position towards a two-state solution,” Ms Abuamara said. “It recognises our oppressor, but not yet the oppressed population.”
Analysts say that Ms Meloni may move slowly due to the precariousness of the situation on the ground in Gaza.
“With the living hostages released, now the narrative by the Meloni government on the recognition of a Palestinian state revolves around the complete absence of Hamas from both the transitional and the future government of Palestine,” said Kelly Petillo, Middle East and North Africa programme manager at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank. “It is Hamas that will have to return the bodies of the hostages, so the no-Hamas condition cannot be fulfilled until these are returned.”
She added that Ms Meloni likely believes that Italy's close relationship to the US could be leveraged.
“The way Meloni sees it, now Italy is way better placed than the rest of the EU on Gaza. And there is still a solid group of prominent EU countries including Germany which is not moving towards recognition just yet,” Ms Ketillo told The National.
Annexation fears
For peace to be truly achieved, all Palestinian territories, including the occupied West Bank, must be included in negotiations, Ms Abuamara said. Israel should withdraw to the 1967 borders to pave the way to a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, she added.
The West Bank was not mentioned in Mr Trump's 20-point plan to end the war but the US President recently said at a news conference that “Israel's not going to do anything with the West Bank”.
Mr Trump was speaking after far-right members of the Israeli Knesset gave preliminary approval to a bill that would approve the annexation of the West Bank.
The area is supposed to be part of a future Palestinian state but now hosts more than 500,000 illegal Israeli settlers, who regularly harass and kill Palestinians with impunity. “I don't trust that Israel will want to keep the ceasefire going, but we hope that other countries will keep the pressure, so we don't go back to where we were before,” Ms Abuamara said.
