WFP Halts Monthly Food Aid for 500,000 People in Gaza as Funding Crisis Deepens

 

EAST JERUSALEM: The World Food Programme has announced it will end monthly assistance for 500,000 people in Gaza due to a severe funding shortfall, a decision that will leave only 1.1 million Palestinians — still roughly half of the territory's population — receiving reduced rations each month, the UN agency said on Monday.

Main News Report

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Monday that it would end monthly assistance to 500,000 people in Gaza, citing a funding shortfall, despite acute needs in the war-battered Palestinian territory, AFP reported.

With the cutbacks, 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza will continue to receive either food or cash assistance each month from the UN agency — but in reduced amounts.

According to a WFP operational note, the cuts will bite in two ways:

• Families receiving food assistance will now get only one food parcel instead of two, along with a smaller bag of wheat flour.
• The 75,000 families who receive assistance in cash will see the amount reduced from 1,250 to 750 shekels ($400 to $240) per month.

The agency said its efforts had mitigated the effects of a famine in Gaza last year and warned that conditions had not improved to the point that aid could be withdrawn.

Background Context

According to the latest assessments, 1.4 million people — or two-thirds of Gaza's population — remain "acutely food insecure" and need humanitarian assistance to survive, the WFP said.

"People are not safe. Airstrikes continue on a daily basis. People continue to be displaced," Shaun Hughes, the WFP country director, told AFP at the agency's office in east Jerusalem. "Almost everybody remains without a permanent home to live in. And the humanitarian conditions are brutal," he added.

In August last year, the UN's Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said that Gaza was suffering famine conditions. The famine classification was lifted in December, two months after a US-brokered ceasefire was announced in Gaza. Israel has kept striking Gaza since then, vowing to kill anyone involved in the October 7 attack.

Since the ceasefire, the WFP had been able to step up assistance and had been reaching between 1.5 million and 1.8 million people every month.

Reactions and Statements

Hughes said the cutbacks were driven entirely by money, not access: "This has been a lifeline. But now, rather than being able to sustain and scale up that assistance, we're actually having to reduce it," he said. "And that's not because we don't have humanitarian access to deliver food; that's because we don't have funding."

"Now is not the time in the history of Palestine and Gaza to turn away from what is happening in Gaza," Hughes added.

The WFP said conditions in Gaza had moderately improved but warned that needs could rise again with the onset of winter.

Israel has allowed more goods into Gaza under the terms of the Trump ceasefire but still imposes heavy restrictions, turning away shipments of anything seen as having potential military use — a policy that has included blocking even prosthetic limbs, according to the United Nations.

Israel has also ramped up its longstanding criticism of the United Nations since the Gaza war, accusing the world body of bias and of perpetuating dependency among Palestinians.

Why This News Matters

The funding crisis behind the cuts is stark. The WFP, funded by governments as well as private donors, has seen a sharp drop in resources — including after US President Donald Trump returned to power and drastically slashed American contributions to UN agencies as well as bilateral aid.

The agency says it needs about $450 million over the next six months for its operations in Gaza and the West Bank, but in 2026 it has received only about half the usual financing for the Palestinian territories.

Gaza is not the only place being squeezed: in September, the agency halved the number of aid recipients in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, from 400,000 to 200,000.

With winter approaching and 1.4 million people still acutely food insecure, the cuts deepen one of the world's most acute humanitarian crises at the moment it is most vulnerable.

Future Developments

The WFP will now seek emergency donor support to bridge the $450 million gap for its Gaza and West Bank operations over the coming six months. Whether governments step in to replace the lost US contributions will determine if the cuts deepen further.

The agency has warned that humanitarian needs could rise again as winter sets in, raising the stakes of any delay in new funding. Further operational notes and funding updates from the WFP are expected in the coming weeks as the new, reduced ration levels take effect across Gaza.

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