Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made a political art of being many things at once.

Since coming to power in 2022, she has become the leader of Italy’s longest-serving postwar government. Meloni has also transformed herself from a politician once viewed as a radical outsider into one of Europe’s most consequential conservative leaders. Her political strength has always rested on adaptability: whether speaking the culture war language of MAGA politics in Washington, European pragmatism in Brussels or nationalism in Rome.

Nowhere is that adaptability more visible than in her dealings in the Middle East.

Her government has long cultivated close relations with Israel and presented itself as one of Israel’s strongest political supporters in Europe. This position was in part self-serving for Meloni: As a leader of a party with roots in Italy’s post-fascist right, the approach to Israel – alongside repeated condemnations of anti-Semitism and the racial laws of the fascist regime – signaled a break with the past.

Yet her strong support for Israel was increasingly at odds with public opinion at home, which moved sharply against Israel as the war in Gaza ground on. Some 75% of Italians hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 66% in 2025, according to a June 2026 Pew Research Center survey.

Perhaps recognizing the yearslong shift, Meloni subtly changed course. In April 2026, Italy suspended the automatic renewal of its defense cooperation agreement with Israel. That followed growing public criticism of Israeli military actions in Gaza and Lebanon, including an incident in which Israeli forces fired warning shots at a clearly marked Italian U.N. convoy in southern Lebanon, damaging one vehicle but causing no injuries.

It was the kind of symbolic recalibration that Meloni has increasingly used to position Italy as a geopolitical hinge between competing power centers in order to maximize Rome’s room for maneuver on the world stage. The Middle East has just given that strategy a new environment.

From Jerusalem to........

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