Category World News

In response to concerns that low turnout may render the poll invalid, Italians are casting ballots on easing citizenship laws and strengthening labor protections.

Voting began on Sunday and will continue through Monday.

Italians are asked if they support reducing the time to which an Italian citizen must reside before becoming a citizen by naturalization to five years in the citizenship question on the ballot paper.

Without having any prior marriages or blood ties to Italy, a resident of a non-European nation must reside there for ten years before applying for citizenship. This process can then take several years.

According to supporters, the reform would bring Italy’s citizenship law in line with that of many other European countries, including Germany and France, and would have an impact on 2.5 million foreigners who reside there.

The main union and left-wing opposition parties in Italy put forth proposals for the measures.

Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, has stated that she won’t cast a ballot at the polls. The action has been criticized as antidemocratic because it would not help to reach the required 50 percent plus one of eligible voters to make the vote valid.

Meloni is vehemently opposed to it despite the fact that his party’s far-right Brothers of Italy has prioritized reducing illegal immigration.

She stated on Thursday that the current system is “one of the most open laws, in the sense that we have consistently been one of the European countries that grant the most citizenships annually.”

In 2023, more than 213,500 people erroneously became Italian citizens, representing a whopping 2% of the EU’s total.

More than 90% of the immigrants were from countries other than the EU, primarily from Albania and Morocco, as well as Argentina and Brazil, two nations with significant Italian immigrant populations.

Even if the proposed reform is implemented, the migration law, which many believe is the most unfair, will remain intact because children born in Italy to foreign parents cannot apply for nationality until they are 18 years old.

Ghali, an Italian singer who was born in Milan to Tunisian parents and has consistently backed child law reform, appealed to his fans to support the proposal as a step in the right direction.

Ghali wrote on Instagram, “I was born here, I always lived here, but I only became a citizen when I was 18.” We ask that five years of living here, not ten, be sufficient to make this nation, with a “Yes.”

A “yes” vote was also urged by Michelle Ngonmo, a cultural entrepreneur and champion of diversity in the fashion industry.

“This referendum is really about dignity and the right to belong,” according to the statement from many of the people who were born here and spent the majority of their adult lives making a difference in Italian society. A lack of citizenship is “like an invisible wall” for them, according to Ngonmo, who has spent most of her life in Italy after relocating from Cameroon as a child.

You can work and pay taxes, but you won’t be fully recognized as Italian. She told the Associated Press news agency, “This makes young generations, especially those in the creative field, feel unappreciative, excluded, and have a lot of potential.”

The other four measures on the ballot address the labor law, including stronger sanctions against dismissal, higher severance pay, permanent contract renewal, and liability for workplace accidents.

Only 46% of Italians were aware of the issues influencing the referendums, according to opinion polls released in the middle of May. With a quorum that was below 35 percent of the more than 51 million voters, the turnout projections were even worse.

Numerous of the previous 78 referendums held in Italy failed because of low turnout.

Israel’s war on Gaza rumbles on, even as international condemnation grows.

Hamas has expressed that it is ready for a deal to end the war, even offering to turn over the administration of Gaza to a technocratic government. United Nations Security Council members have overwhelmingly voted in favour of a ceasefire, a resolution blocked from passing only by a United States veto.

But Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is adamant in its refusal of any agreement that does not include what it calls the “defeat of Hamas”, even if that means endangering the Israeli captives still held in Gaza.

“Hamas is already the weakest it’s ever been, and there’s nothing they can do that is remotely comparable to what Israel possesses,” writer and researcher on Israel-Palestine and founder of The Fire These Times podcast Elia Ayoub told Al Jazeera.

“There’s ample evidence by now that the only reason this genocide is ongoing is because Netanyahu wants it to continue. It’s clearly just an excuse to keep the war going.”

Netanyahu is ‘reliant upon Hamas’

But why would Netanyahu want the war – which is Israel’s longest since 1948, and is causing economic crisis – to continue?

One answer is that the war provides a distraction from Netanyahu’s own problems.

Israel’s longest-serving prime minister has well-documented legal troubles; he is being tried for corruption.

And, aside from that, should a permanent ceasefire be realised, some analysts believe Israeli society will hold Netanyahu accountable for security shortcomings that led to October 7.

“He’s afraid once it’s done, eyes will rightfully turn to him over corruption and the failures of October 7,” Diana Buttu, a legal scholar and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, said.

And so, Netanyahu has two main tasks. The first is to prolong the war, allowing him to continue using it as an excuse to avoid accountability. The second is to prevent the breakup of his government, while somehow setting himself up for another successful election, which must happen before October 2026.

Netanyahu has been “reliant upon Hamas throughout the war”, Mairav Zonszein, an expert on Israel and Palestine for the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.

“The far right and Netanyahu have consistently used Hamas as an excuse not to negotiate or plan for a day after,” she said.

Israel’s goal has nothing to do with Hamas

The Israeli refusal to negotiate a final end to the war stands in stark contrast to Hamas’s willingness to hand over all captives held in Gaza.

Over the last 20 months, much of Hamas’s leadership has been killed. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, was assassinated in Tehran on July 31, and Yahya Sinwar, his successor, was killed in Gaza on October 16.

Israel is now claiming it killed Sinwar’s successor and younger brother, Mohammed, though Hamas has yet to confirm his death.

Militarily, analysts say, Hamas is estimated to have lost significant strength. It is still conducting some attacks, but fewer and further between than the ambushes it was able to carry out earlier in the war.

In a sign that Hamas perhaps understands that it is no longer in a position to rule Gaza, it has also offered to step down from the administration of the Palestinian territory, which it has controlled since 2006, and hand over to a technocratic government.

“The technocrat offer is not new,” Hamzé Attar, a Luxembourg-based defence analyst from Gaza, said.

“It was on the table since before the invasion of Rafah [which occurred on May 6, 2024]. They want Hamas to give up their arms and give up everything, and Hamas has responded by saying: ‘We’re stepping aside.’”

That has been firmly rejected by Israel, which has not endorsed any vision for post-war Gaza.

Instead, over the last nearly 20 months, Israel has killed more than 54,300 Palestinians and wounded more than 124,000 in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.

Ethnic cleansing: The deeper goal

In addition, Gaza is now “the hungriest place on Earth”, according to the UN, all its inhabitants at risk of famine after Israel strangled aid delivery throughout its war, then completely blocked it from March 2 until May 27.

Israel has also turned 70 percent of the enclave into no-go zones.

All the while, Israel’s bombing of Gaza continues.

Discounting the pretext of destroying Hamas and returning the captives, some analysts believe there is a deeper goal: pushing Palestinians out of Gaza.

“Neither Hamas nor the hostages are the targets,” Meron Rappaport, an editor at Local Call, a Hebrew-language news site, said.

“The goal is to push the people of Gaza into very few, small and closed areas where food will be delivered scarcely, hoping that the pressure on them will get them to ask to leave the Strip.”

“Israel is no longer fighting Hamas,” he added.

Netanyahu said in late May that Israel would control the entirety of Gaza by the end of its latest offensive, while many foreign officials and experts have warned either directly or implicitly that Israel’s actions amount to ethnically cleansing Gaza.

A recent report in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, cited 82 percent of Jewish Israelis supporting the expulsion of the people in Gaza.

To do so would have a historic impact, Buttu said, one that Netanyahu might feel he can portray as protecting Israel from a Palestinian state – something he has repeatedly promised to prevent.

“He recognises he will be the fall guy or the hero,” Buttu said. “If he is the one who ethnically cleanses Gaza, he becomes the hero.”

Until that happens, analysts believe, Palestinians will continue to die at the hands of the Israeli military. Hamas is the pretext and their willingness to negotiate or succumb is of secondary importance.

“Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of ending this war,” Zonszein said. “It doesn’t matter what Hamas offers. They can offer to return all the hostages or give up governance.

“This war is going to continue until Netanyahu is forced to stop it, and that can only come from Trump.”

At least 75 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli-led raids across Gaza, and rescuers are frantically searching for bodies under the rubble following the bombing of a residential building in Gaza City, which the civil defense described as a “full-fledged massacre.”

Prior to Saturday’s attack on the home in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, which left at least 16 people dead, including women and children, the military did not give a “warn, no alert,” according to a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense, Mahmoud Basel, who spoke to Al Jazeera.

According to Basel, who added that about 85 people were thought to be trapped beneath the rubble, “this is truly a full-fledged massacre… a building full of civilians.”

A displaced Palestinian at the site, Hamed Keheel, recalled that the attack had occurred on the second day of the Eid al-Adha festival, and that “we woke up to the strikes, destruction, yelling, rocks hitting us.”

He claimed that this is his occupation. We wake up to carry women’s and children’s bodies from under rubble, not to cheer our children and dress them up.

Hassan Alkhor, a resident from the Abu Sharia family, informed Al Jazeera that the building is their home. He prayed, “May God hold the Israeli forces and [Prime Minister] Netanyahu accountable.”

According to a report in the Times of Israel on Saturday, the Israeli military claimed to have killed Asaad Abu Sharia, the Mujahideen Brigades leader, who it claimed had participated in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Hamas confirmed the killing in a statement posted on Telegram, claiming Ahmed Abu Sharia’s brother had also been killed in the attack, which it claimed was “part of a series of brutal massacres against civilians.”

“A few cups of rice for our hungry kids.”

In addition to the latest deadly incident involving Israeli operations that have resulted in the deaths of 118 people and others have been missing in less than two weeks, Israeli forces also killed at least eight Palestinians waiting nearby a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)-run aid distribution facility in southern Gaza on Saturday.

Samir Abu Hadid, a resident of Gaza, reported to the AFP news agency that hundreds of people had gathered near the aid facility’s al-Alam roundabout.

The Israeli [forces] opened fire from armored vehicles stationed nearby, firing into the air and then at civilians, according to Abu Hadid.

After visiting the aid station to get “a handful of rice for our starving children,” a woman claimed her husband had been killed in the attack.

I begged him not to leave because he claimed he felt like he was on the verge of death. She said, “He insisted on finding anything to feed our children.”

In late May, the GHF, a shady United States-backed private organization that Israel has established to distribute aid under the protection of its troops and security contractors, started operating.

Critics claim that the organization uses weapons to aid in achieving its stated goals of ethnic cleansing large swathes of Gaza and gaining control over the entire enclave, in violation of humanitarian principles of neutrality.

Hamas “direct threats” against its operations, GHF claimed on Saturday, making it impossible to distribute any humanitarian aid. According to a statement, “These threats made it impossible to proceed today without risking innocent lives.” Hasso informed Reuters news agency that it had no knowledge of these “alleged threats.”

The UN, which has resisted cooperating with the GHF, has warned that the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are in danger of starving after an 11-week Israeli blockade, with the rate of young children with acute malnutrition nearly tripling.

“Lost generation for the future”

In the wake of the looming famine, it became clear that health officials in the region had documented more than 300 miscarriages over the course of an 80-day period.

With the availability of basic medical supplies like iron supplements and prenatal vitamins, expecting mothers are more likely to experience miscarriage and premature births.

According to Brenda Kelly, a consultant obstetrician at Oxford University Hospital, Gaza is “losing a future generation of children,” making reference to a “staggering rise” in stillbirths, miscarriages, and pre-term births.

One of the main causes of miscarriages and stillbirths is “what we’re seeing now is the direct result of Israel’s weaponizing of hunger in Gaza,” she said.

Grave stress and psychological trauma, repeated displacement, and a lack of safe shelter all contribute to severe malnutrition in pregnant women, she said.