Hundreds of people took to the streets of Florence on Wednesday in response to the Israeli raid on the Global Sumud Flotilla. The gathering began in Piazza Santissima Annunziata, where demonstrators held an assembly in solidarity with Palestine. As the evening progressed, the assembly turned into a march that moved toward Piazza della Libertà, drawing more participants along the way.
More than a thousand people joined the procession, which blocked traffic on viale Matteotti in both directions. According to reports, the demonstration was peaceful, and passing motorists greeted it with applause rather than complaints.
The protest in Florence was part of a broader wave of mobilizations across Tuscany and Italy. In Pisa, about 500 demonstrators blocked the first six tracks of the central railway station, halting train traffic for nearly an hour. The group, made up of student organizations, grassroots unions, and radical left movements, had marched from Piazza XX Settembre—renamed by activists as “Piazza Gaza”—to the station. After leaving the tracks, they returned to the city center for another rally. A special session of the city council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been scheduled for Wednesday, on the eve of a nationwide general strike called by several unions.
In Livorno, protests also reached the port. A few hundred people blocked a ferry bound for Sardinia, delaying its departure by nearly an hour. Later in the night, the demonstrators marched to the prefecture, where they continued their rally outside the government building.
The protests followed news of the boarding of the Global Sumud Flotilla by Israeli forces earlier in the day, an episode that has reignited pro-Palestinian demonstrations in several Italian cities.
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