On the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Hon. Antonio Tajani, stated:
On the third anniversary of October 7, my thoughts are with the victims of Hamas’s terrorist attacks and with their families. Honoring their memory, and that of all the hostages, remains a duty of the international community. We will continue working for peace and stability in the Middle East, with a view to a political two‑state solution that ensures Israel’s security and provides the Palestinian people with rights, dignity, and a future.
The President of the Council of Ministers, Giorgia Meloni, stated:
Three years ago, on October 7, 2023, Hamas’s terrorist attacks massacred men, women, and children; assaulted young people gathered to listen to music; tore innocent people from their families and dragged them into captivity.
Today we remember the victims of that barbarity and renew our closeness to their loved ones, to those who endured the horror of abduction, and to the people of Israel.
The passage of time does not diminish the gravity of those crimes. No cause can justify the deliberate massacre of innocents. Remembering it also means renewing our commitment against all forms of antisemitism.
Precisely in the name of protecting all civilians involved, we cannot remain indifferent to the dramatic and unacceptable suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants or to the growing violence endured by Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. The spiral of violence must be stopped.
Italy will continue working for a peace that guarantees security for Israelis and a future of freedom and dignity for Palestinians, in the perspective of two States living side by side within recognized borders. A future in which terrorism has no place and no child must grow up in fear and hatred.
The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, issued the following statement:
Today marks the tragic anniversary of the ignoble attack carried out by Hamas against numerous Israeli civilians. Many young people—including some of other nationalities—were vilely struck, taken hostage, or deprived of their lives while gathered for a moment of celebration. Others were brutally killed or abducted in their homes, with no mercy shown to children or the elderly.
Terrorist acts can never be justified or forgotten. They will remain, for all peoples, a painful warning that the barbaric and uncivil scourges of terrorism, antisemitism, and every form of ethnic or religious hatred must always be firmly condemned and rejected, in the Middle East and throughout the world.
The repugnant acts committed on October 7, 2023, with extreme and inhuman cruelty, reopened a dramatic phase of instability and violence in the region. To the atrocious suffering inflicted then, we must add the suffering that, even more since that day, weighs upon multitudes of Palestinians. The military operations conducted by Israeli forces in Gaza have caused human and material devastation of intolerable severity. At the same time, the erosion of territories assigned to the Palestinian National Authority is unacceptable.
This spiral of unprecedented violence must be halted, restoring instead the conditions—now deeply compromised—for coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians in the “Two Peoples, Two States” perspective, so they may live peacefully, side by side.
Italy will continue to support every effort aimed at this goal.
On this occasion, I wish to renew the closeness of the Italian Republic to the people of Israel, to the families of the victims, and to all those who still bear the wounds of that terrible day, hoping that the determination of the entire international community will be strengthened to build lasting conditions for peace and security for those lands and those afflicted peoples.
