Italy has not recognized a Palestinian state, Rome’s embassy in Tel Aviv told JNS on Monday, despite Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s having referred to Mahmoud Abbas as the “president of Palestine” during a visit on Friday.
“Italy didn’t recognize the State of Palestine, neither in September nor in the last days,” an embassy spokesperson said in a statement to JNS. “The opposition, in fact, is underlining that Italy should have recognized [it].”
Rome has been using “Palestine” for “ages” and the term does not carry any “juridical or political implications,” according to the spokesperson.
Meloni welcomed Abbas at Chigi Palace on Friday, just five weeks after she previously hosted the nonagenarian Palestinian Authority leader.
The two leaders “discussed the latest developments in the region and in particular the need to consolidate the ceasefire in Gaza through the full implementation of [U.S. President Donald] Trump’s peace plan,” Meloni tweeted.
Meloni said she “reiterated Italy’s determination to play a leading role in the stabilization and reconstruction of Gaza” and expressed support for the P.A.'s administrative reform, “which is of fundamental importance also in the context of the necessary relaunch of a political process that leads to a just and lasting peace based on the two-state solution.”
Il caloroso benvenuto di Atreju al Presidente della Palestina, Mahmoud Abbas. pic.twitter.com/XB6iGKtlo3
— Giorgia Meloni (@GiorgiaMeloni) December 12, 2025
Following their meeting at the palace, Abbas made an appearance at the “Atreju” festival of the premier’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party, where Meloni said the “president of Palestine” received a “warm welcome.”
“I’m very happy that Abu Mazen is here at Atreju,” Meloni said on the stage of the annual festival, using Abbas’s Arabic nickname, Italy’s Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata news agency reported.
“His presence demonstrates the leading role Italy played in the difficult crisis in the Middle East, and how it can still have a central role in the difficult path toward peace within a two-state perspective,” she said.
Abbas in his speech declared that “the absence of a Palestinian state is a source of instability and extremism that affects the entire security of the region,” according to the Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata report.
He declared that “Palestine” would “not be a security concern for anyone, but a partner in building peace” throughout the region.
The P.A. leader has yet to unequivocally denounce Oct. 7, 2023—the deadliest single-day attack on Jews since the Holocaust—publicly in Arabic. In addition, Abbas, whose doctoral dissertation contained Holocaust denial, has often peddled antisemitic tropes and libels.
After French President Emmanuel Macron embraced Abbas as a peace partner last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Paris to “stick to the facts, stick to realities and don’t try to escape it.
“The reality is that the Palestinian leader Abbas, who was feted right now in Paris, pays terrorists to kill Jews,” Netanyahu said. “The more Jews they kill, the more they get paid. They take care of their families.”
A reformed mechanism brands the terror stipends as “welfare support,” and the payment allocation system was transferred from an official P.A. body to an “independent” foundation under Ramallah’s control, but Abbas has said he would not deduct a “single penny” from the fund.
Netanyahu added that during the 21 years Abbas has remained in what began as a four-year term, the P.A. has continued naming squares after mass murderers and using textbooks that call for Israel’s destruction.
“When you look at the facts, the force for peace, the force for stability, the force for progress, is not the Palestinian Authority, but Israel,” he said.
