Pd's internal division on Israel-Palestine conflict highlighted

The discomfort of a part of the Democratic Party (Pd) towards the increasingly polarized climate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is evident, as is the feeling that within the center-left, space is shrinking for a position that tries to combine condemnation of the invasion of Gaza and the Israeli right with the defense of dialogue with Israel and the "two peoples, two states" perspective.

This is the thread that runs through the national assembly of 'Sinistra per Israele' (Left for Israel) in Milan, attended by some exponents of the reformist area of the Pd.

A difference that also emerges compared to the words of Pd secretary Elly Schlein, who in recent days had defined Ben Gvir "not the exception but the rule of the Israeli government."

In the Milanese assembly, however, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli nationalist right are criticized without ever identifying Israel with its government. "Those images do not represent the Israel we defend. They are alien to Israel's values," says Emanuele Fiano, who is also president of Sinistra per Israele as well as a historic exponent of the Pd, referring to the images of the Freedom Flotilla activists arrested while Ben Gvir smiles in front of the cameras.

Fiano also returns to the protests of April 25th in Milan: "I did not feel physical fear but the sensation of having become estranged from a part of the political world within which I lived: that of anti-fascism." For him, "a part of the left has stopped reading the conflict in the context of its entire history. We talk about oppressors and oppressed and lose complexity."

Via video link, the Vice-President of the European Parliament, Pina Picierno, also intervened: "We politically condemn Netanyahu and his fascist and illiberal right, but we do not isolate Israel." Then the passage on antisemitism: "We are at the point of 'I am not antisemitic, but…'. And it is within that 'but' that the poison lurks."

Luciano Belli Paci, son of life senator Liliana Segre, also insists on the topic: "The actions of the Israeli government and army do not represent the cause, but the occasion for the re-emergence of pre-existing antisemitism." For this reason, he observes, "one thing is the government of Israel and another thing is the State of Israel, one thing is the Israeli people and another thing are the Jews in the world."

In the Milanese hall also sit some of the Pd municipal councilors who in recent days voted against the suspension of the Milan-Tel Aviv twinning. A line also defended by MP Lia Quartapelle, who claims Milan's role "for a peace conference of mayors" and distances herself from the proposal to interrupt the twinning, defining it "a culture that wants to censor initiatives of encounter."

"Ours must be a role that nurtures a culture of peace, a culture of recognizing the other. I am sorry to say that on this, in the Pd, there is still a lot of work to be done." For Quartapelle, "steps backward have unfortunately been taken compared to past years, when the possibility of dialogue was contemplated even within the party. Today it is not so."