Mattarella: 7 October warning against hatred on an ethnic or religious basis

Coinciding with the anniversary of the 7 October 2023 attacks carried out by Hamas, the Head of State, Sergio Mattarella, issues a warning «so that the barbaric and uncivilized plagues of terrorism, anti-Semitism and every form of ethnic and religious hatred are forever condemned and firmly rejected, in the Middle East and throughout the world».

For the President of the Republic «today marks the tragic anniversary of the ignoble attack perpetrated by Hamas against numerous Israeli civilians. Many young people, including those of other nationalities, were cowardly attacked, taken hostage or deprived of their lives while they were gathered for a festive occasion. Others brutally killed or kidnapped from their homes, without any mercy for children and the elderly. Acts of terrorism - adds Mattarella - can never be justified or archived. They will remain, for all peoples, a painful warning that the barbaric and uncivilized plagues of terrorism, anti-Semitism and every form of hatred on an ethnic and religious basis are forever condemned and firmly rejected, in the Middle East and throughout the world."

The head of state also underlines how "the repugnant acts which, with extreme and inhuman cruelty, were committed on 7 October 2023" have reopened a dramatic phase of instability and violence in the region. To the atrocious suffering caused is added that which, even more since then, weighs on multitudes of Palestinians. The military operations - highlights the President of the Republic - conducted by the Israeli forces in Gaza have caused human and material devastation of intolerable gravity. At the same time, the process of erosion of territories attributed to the Palestinian National Authority is unacceptable." Hence the appeal for "the spiral of unprecedented violence" to be stopped, "by recreating instead the conditions, now deeply compromised, of coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians in the perspective of "Two Peoples, Two States", in order to be able to live peacefully, side by side".

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is in Split to participate in the Med9, also intervenes on the topic: «Precisely in the name of protecting the entire civilian population involved, we cannot remain indifferent to the dramatic and unacceptable suffering of the inhabitants of Gaza or the growing violence of which Palestinian civilians are victims in the West Bank. The spiral of violence must be stopped."

In a note released by Palazzo Chigi on the anniversary of the events of 7 October 2023, the Prime Minister assures that Italy will continue to work for a peace that guarantees security to Israelis and to Palestinians a future of freedom and dignity, in the perspective of two States living next to each other within recognized borders. A future in which - concludes Melon - terrorism has no place and no child has to grow up in fear and hatred."