Lebanon

Italy’s decision to suspend a defence agreement with Israel has more symbolic value than concrete consequences, but it is an unprecedented move by the Italian government and reflects deep unease over its longtime ally’s actions in the Middle East, analysts say.

On Monday, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Italy would not renew a memorandum of understanding – signed in 2003 and ratified in 2005 – between the two countries’ ministries of defence. The accord provided a framework for cooperation in “defence industry and procurement policy” and “import, export and transit of defence and military equipment”, among other things.

The memorandum was set to automatically renew every five years “unless a written notice of intention to denounce is given” by one of the two countries to the other.

That notice arrived on Monday in a letter written by Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto to his Israeli counterpart, Israel Katz.

The Israeli government has downplayed the move. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said it was a deal that “never materialised” and did not have “substantial content”. “Israel’s security will not be harmed,” he wrote on X.

It is true that the Italy-Israel agreement constituted more of a political framework than a series of operational commitments between the two countries. Furthermore, the Italian government’s decision does not cancel it outright, as opposition parties and human rights advocates have long demanded, but merely suspends it.

Still, the move is a sharp reversal for a right-wing government that has been one of Europe’s staunchest allies of Israel.

Along with Germany, Italy has been one of the strongest opponents of calls to suspend a trade agreement between Israel and the European Union. Italy has largely supported Israel’s war on Gaza, which a United Nations inquiry says amounts to genocide, and it has refused to recognise Palestinian statehood. 

But relations between Israel and Italy have soured recently.

On Monday, the Italian ambassador to Tel Aviv, Luca Ferrari, was summoned after Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani condemned Israel for its “unacceptable attacks against the civilian population” in Lebanon during a visit there. And last week, the Italian government accused Israeli forces of firing warning shots at a convoy of Italian peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, prompting Tajani to summon the Israeli ambassador.

Israel also launched a massive attack across Lebanon last week, bombing 100 targets in 10 minutes on Wednesday, shortly after a two-week truce between Iran and the US was called. That series of strikes killed hundreds of people in one of the country’s worst mass slaughters since the end of the country’s civil war in 1990. Observers say the attack on Lebanon was an unwelcome disruptor to efforts to de-escalate tensions in the region.

De-escalating Middle East tensions

The Italian government’s decision to suspend its defence agreement with Israel “must be seen within a broader effort to progressively stabilise the region, including by reducing tensions in Lebanon”, said Michele Valensise, president of the Institute for International Affairs and former secretary-general of Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“Israel’s military operation there objectively constitutes an irritant, complicating negotiations with the Iranians,” said Valensise. “If the Lebanese front can be part of a deal with Iran, then everyone has an interest in de-escalation there.”

European governments, including Italy, have been watching nervously as the United States-Israeli war on Iran has unfolded. Following initial joint Israel-US strikes on Tehran on February 28, Iranian forces brought shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz to a near-total halt, causing the paralysis of the one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports that pass through the narrow waterway in peacetime.

Following a first failed round of high-stakes Iran-US talks in Islamabad last weekend – amid a fragile two-week truce – Washington imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports, further aggravating fears of a protracted energy crisis. Italy heavily relies on gas imports.

‘Stop the genocide’

Possibly more importantly, Italy’s government and prime minister are preparing for elections next year.

“There is a general discontent over the war in Iran and the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz – a crisis that’s impacting Italian growth and, if it continues, could have a significant impact on citizens, something Meloni worries about in a pre-election year,” said Arturo Varvelli, a political scientist and senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Italian public opinion also has a strong pro-Palestinian component. Last October, more than two million Italians took to the streets as part of a general strike in solidarity with the Global Sumud Flotilla, which was intercepted by Israel while trying to bring aid to Palestinians in Gaza. The flotilla had been carrying 40 Italians among its passengers, calling on Israel to “stop the genocide”.

“There’s a concern that this will be a long agony, between an increasingly unmanageable Trump and the economic problems he and Netanyahu have caused with the war in the Middle East,” Varvelli said.

After years of efforts to emerge as US President Donald Trump’s “whisperer” in Europe, Meloni has been pushed by the war in Iran to put some distance between herself and Trump. Rome refused the US president’s request to join a naval coalition to force the opening of the Strait of Hormuz and to allow US bombers to refuel at a military base in southern Italy.

Trump had not commented on those decisions until yesterday, when, in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, he took aim at Meloni. The Italian PM had leapt to defend Pope Leo XIV after he became embroiled in a feud with Trump. Pope Leo had condemned the US president’s threat that Iran’s “civilisation will die” if it didn’t re-open the Strait of Hormuz. In response to that, Trump unleashed a storm of criticism at Leo, calling him “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy”. He said he does not “want a Pope who criticises the President of the United States”.

Trump also posted a bizarre image of himself as a Christ-like figure healing the sick on social media. He has since claimed it was meant to depict him as a doctor, following widespread criticism.

Of Meloni, who he once affectionately called “a real live wire”, Trump said, “I’m shocked at her” during an interview with Corriere della Sera on Tuesday.

“Do people like her? I can’t believe it,” he said in the interview, adding, “I thought she had courage. I was wrong.”

With the global attention fixated on the diplomatic efforts to end the war on Iran, Israel has systematically escalated its attacks on Gaza and choked off vital aid, plunging the besieged enclave into what economic experts are now calling an “engineered, compounded famine”.

The number of aid trucks entering Gaza has dropped drastically in violation of the October 2025 ceasefire with Hamas. Since then, the Government Media Office in Gaza has recorded 2,400 military violations by Israeli forces, resulting in the killing of more than 700 Palestinians.

On Tuesday, Israel’s military killed at least 11 Palestinians, including two children, in separate attacks across the war-torn Strip.

The intensity of these attacks spiked during peak regional tensions. Between February 28 and April 8, while Israel and the US were engaged in a bombing campaign against Iran, Israeli forces bombed Gaza on 36 out of those 40 days.

In the last five weeks alone, more than 100 people have been killed, including Al Jazeera journalist Mohammed Wishah. Israel has killed more than 72,336 people since launching the brutal military offensive on October 7, 2023.

The ‘truck deception’

While Israel frequently claims it is allowing hundreds of aid trucks into Gaza, Palestinian officials and economic experts argue these figures are a deliberate mathematical deception.

According to the Government Media Office, only 41,714 aid and commercial trucks have entered Gaza over the past six months. This represents a mere 37 percent of the 110,400 trucks stipulated under the ceasefire agreement. The fuel situation is even more critical, with only 1,366 fuel trucks entering out of a promised 9,200 – an abysmal 14 percent compliance rate.

Recent daily logs highlight the severity of the bottleneck. On April 13, a total of only 102 aid trucks and 7 fuel trucks were allowed into the entire Strip, alongside 216 commercial trucks – a fraction of the more than 600 total trucks required daily under the “ceasefire” deal. By April 14, the numbers remained critically low with 122 aid trucks and 12 fuel trucks entering.

Crucially, Israeli authorities entirely shut down additional entry points like the Zikim and Kissufim crossings, which had processed dozens of commercial and aid trucks just a day prior, bottlenecking all limited traffic exclusively through Karem Abu Salem.

Mohammed Abu Jayyab, a Palestinian economic expert based in Gaza, told Al Jazeera that Israel utilises a “technical and commercial deception” to inflate these numbers.

“An Israeli truck carries up to 32 or 34 pallets… which are then unloaded into two or three smaller, dilapidated Palestinian trucks on the Gaza side,” Abu Jayyab explained. “Consequently, the UN and Israel count double or triple the actual number of Israeli trucks entering.” One pallet holds roughly 1 tonne of goods or food items.

Furthermore, Israel recently banned mixed-load shipments. If a merchant brings in 20 pallets of sugar, the remaining 12 pallet spaces on the truck must remain empty, yet it is still registered as a full commercial truck.

“The political agreement stipulated a ‘truck’ but did not specify quantities, weights, or the number of pallets,” Abu Jayyab noted, allowing Israel to weaponise logistics to restrict aid while appearing compliant.

Engineering starvation

This logistical strangulation is part of a broader strategy. Hassan Abu Riyala, undersecretary of the Ministry of National Economy in Gaza, stated in a meeting published on the ministry’s official Telegram channel that Israel is “engineering a policy of starvation”.

To ensure chaos in the local markets and sky-high prices, Israel has deliberately dismantled civil regulatory bodies. “The occupation targeted the majority of the crews that monitored prices, and assassinated the [former] undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy and five directors general during the war,” Abu Riyala said.

The results have been devastating, basic commodities have become scarce, and bread production has plummeted to 200 tonnes daily, far below the 450 tonnes required to feed the population.

“We manage this structural deficit under exceptional and coercive conditions,” Ismail Al-Thawabteh, director general of the Government Media Office, told Al Jazeera.

He described the ongoing reduction of supplies despite the truce as a “systematic restriction of basic supplies” that pushes the population towards dangerous levels of food insecurity. Fresh produce has skyrocketed, with 1kg (2.2lb) of tomatoes jumping from $1.50 to nearly $4 in a matter of weeks.

Moreover, the humanitarian catastrophe is being accelerated by the withdrawal of major aid groups. Al-Thawabteh noted that the scaling back or suspension of operations by key international institutions, most notably the World Food Programme (WFP), due to Israeli restrictions, represents a “highly dangerous development” that threatens the complete collapse of Gaza’s relief system.

“We issue an urgent appeal to the international community and the guarantors of the agreement to immediately pressure Israel to open the crossings… before reaching a point of no return and an imminent human explosion,” he said.

A ‘compounded famine’

The crisis has evolved beyond a simple lack of food; it is now a complete collapse of the Palestinian economy.

Abu Jayyab described the current situation as a “compounded famine”. With unemployment soaring to 80 percent and the destruction of more than 160,000 jobs across industrial, agricultural, and commercial sectors, the population has entirely lost its purchasing power.

“It has become illogical to link the entry of food supplies from the crossings to their availability to Palestinian citizens,” Abu Jayyab told Al Jazeera. Even when goods reach the market, between 70 to 80 percent of families simply cannot afford to buy them due to the total absence of income.

This extreme deprivation is forcing civilians into life-threatening alternatives. “The return of long queues for bakeries, and citizens resorting to burning plastic and waste in the absence of cooking gas, are dangerous field indicators of an unprecedented deterioration,” Al-Thawabteh warned, noting that government health facilities are currently struggling to treat respiratory and skin diseases resulting from this toxic pollution.

The medical blockade

Meanwhile, the stranglehold extends to Gaza’s most vulnerable patients. While the ceasefire agreement mandated the opening of the Rafah crossing for medical evacuations, Israel has kept the borders tightly restricted.

Over the past six months, only 2,703 people have been allowed to cross through Rafah out of an expected 36,800 – a compliance rate of just 7 percent. Consequently, only 8 percent of the severely wounded and chronically ill patients slated for urgent medical evacuation have been permitted to leave. According to the World Health Organization, roughly 18,000 people are still trapped in Gaza waiting for life-saving treatment abroad.

Israel’s ambassador to the US has held talks with his Lebanese counterpart. But as a pro-settler ‘activist’ and former soldier who took part in invading Lebanon, critics say Yechiel Leiter is a problematic negotiator.

Italy has suspended the renewal of a 20-year-long defence agreement with Israel, following recent tensions between the two countries after the Italian government accused Israeli forces of firing warning shots at a convoy of Italian peacekeepers in Lebanon.

After the first direct talks in decades, Israel and Lebanon have agreed to begin ongoing negotiations for the ‘security of both countries’. Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna explains why US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sees this ‘milestone’ meeting as just the ‘start of the process’.

US president says second round of talks could be held in Pakistan as blockade of Iranian ports continues.