The pier built by the U.S. military to bring aid to Gaza has been removed due to weather to protect it, and the U.S. is considering not re-installing it unless the aid begins flowing out into the population again, U.S. officials said Friday.

While the military has helped deliver desperately needed food through the pier, the vast majority of it is still sitting in the adjacent storage yard and that area is almost full. Aid agencies have had difficulty moving the food to areas further into Gaza where it is most needed because the humanitarian convoys have come under attack.

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The U.N., which has the widest reach in delivering aid to starving Palestinians, hasn’t been distributing food and other emergency supplies arriving through the pier since June 9. The pause came after the Israeli military used an area near the pier to fly out hostages after their rescue in a raid that killed more than 270 Palestinians, prompting a U.N. security review over concerns that aid workers’ safety and neutrality may have compromised.

U.N. World Food Program spokesman Steve Taravella said Friday that the U.N. participation in the pier project is still on pause pending resolution of the security concerns.

While always meant to be temporary and never touted as a complete solution to the problems getting humanitarian aid into Gaza, President Joe Biden’s $230 million project has faced a series of setbacks since aid first rolled ashore May 17 and has been criticized by relief groups and congressional Republicans as a costly distraction.

The pier has been used to get more than 19.4 million pounds, or 8.6 million kilograms, of food into Gaza, but has been stymied not only by aid pauses but unpredictable weather. Rough seas damaged the pier just days into its initial operations, forcing the military to remove it temporarily for repairs and then reinstall it. Heavy seas on Friday forced the military to remove it again and take it to the Israeli port at Ashdod.

Several U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss military movements, said the military could reinstall the pier once the bad weather passes in the coming days, but the final decision on whether to reinstall it hasn’t been made.

Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, acknowledged that she doesn’t know when the pier will be reinstalled. “When the commander decides that it is the right time to reinstall that pier, we’ll keep you updated on that.,” she said.

She also said Friday that there is a need for more aid to come into Cyprus and be transported to the pier. She noted that the secure area onshore is “pretty close to full,” but that the intention is still to get aid into Gaza by all means necessary. She said the U.S. is having discussions with the aid agencies about the distribution of the food.

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But, she added, “Of course, if there’s not enough room in the marshalling yard, then it doesn’t make sense to put our men or women out there when there’s nothing to do.”

Palestinians are facing widespread hunger because fighting in the nearly nine-month Israel-Hamas war, Israeli restrictions on border crossings that are far more productive than the sea route and the attacks on the aid convoys have severely limited the flow of food, medicine and other supplies.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has condemned racist and antisemitic remarks made by some members of the ruling Brothers of Italy party’s youth league.

Speaking to reporters in Brussels, Meloni said antisemitism and racism are incompatible with the party after two leading members of the National Youth resigned over alleged antisemtic remarks made against a Jewish Senator.

“I have said many times and repeat, I think that those who have racist, antisemitic or nostalgic feelings have simply got their home wrong, because these feelings are incompatible with the Brothers of Italy, they are incompatible with the Italian right, they are incompatible with the political line which we have clearly defined in recent years, and therefore I do not accept that there are ambiguities on this,” she said.

Meloni’s comments come after a report appeared in the left-wing online newspaper, Fanpage, which claimed it had video and audio recordings of some National Youth members using racist slurs and making Nazi salutes.

But Meloni also took a swipe at Fanpage’s reporting methods.

“I think that if we want to call it a journalistic investigation, the same attitude and the same investigation would be carried out in all the youth organisations of other political parties. We don’t know what could come out, we won’t know. You know why? Because in the history of the Italian Republic, what Fanpage did with Brothers of Italy is a first,” she said.

“It has never even been considered that they could infiltrate a political organisation, secretly record its meetings, also record the personal affairs of minors.”

The Fanpage investigation, entitled ‘Melonian Youth’, has sent shockwaves through the Brothers of Italy at the same time as Meloni has been seeking to cement a reputation as a moderate voice on the EU stage.

There has also been outrage from members of the Jewish Community of Rome, with some calling on Meloni to punish the youth wing members exposed in the investigation. 

“The Jewish Community of Rome condemns the shameful images of racism and antisemitism that emerged from the Fanpage investigation,” president Victor Fadlun posted on X.

He’s urged the party to take “appropriate action,” saying it was “imperative that society” reacts against discrimination.

Brothers of Italy has its roots in the Italian Social Movement (MSI), formed in 1946 as a successor to Benito Mussolini’s fascist movement that ruled Italy for more than 20 years.

Meloni has repeatedly condemned the racist, anti-Jewish laws enacted by Mussolini in 1938 in a bid to turn her party into a mainstream conservative force.

But she has also ignored calls to declare herself “anti-fascist”, prompting some of her critics to say she has failed to fully distance herself from neo-fascism.

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