Half a million people in Gaza will lose their monthly World Food Programme (WFP) assistance as the UN agency says it is running out of money even as hunger tightens its grip across the enclave.
The WFP said the decision comes at a moment when needs remain extreme in the war-battered Palestinian territory, where 1.4m people are described as “acutely food insecure” and dependent on humanitarian support to survive.
With the cuts, the number of Palestinians in Gaza receiving WFP aid will fall by roughly a third, to 1.1m people.
The agency said its support had helped blunt the effects of a famine last year, but stressed that continued assistance is still critical.
“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,” Shaun Hughes, the WFP country director, told AFP at the agency’s office in east Jerusalem.
“And that’s not because we don’t have humanitarian access to deliver food; that’s because we don’t have funding.”
‘Extremely difficult’
In Gaza, where nearly the entire population has been displaced at least once, residents said the pullback in aid is sparking fresh fear.
“The hardest thing for a mother is to see her children hungry and be unable to provide food for them,” said Samaher al-Najjar, 45, from the southern city of Khan Yunis.
“We live in a tent and do not have the money to buy everything we need. We rely on aid to provide part of our food,” she said.
“All we want is for our children to have something to eat every day. The consequences of this would be extremely difficult.”
Palestinian fishermen repairing nets recovered from the rubble of their homes destroyed in Israeli attacks
Ayman Daghmash, 40, from Gaza City said the prospect of the cutoffs was “frightening”.
“The assistance helped us get by for several days, but now we do not know how we will meet our family’s needs, especially after community kitchens in Gaza stopped operating some time ago,” he said.
“There is also no work or steady income, and food prices are beyond our means. If assistance stops coming from every direction, how will we feed our children?”
The WFP said it was able to bring in additional assistance after a US-brokered ceasefire took effect a year ago. Israel has kept striking Gaza since then, vowing to kill anyone involved in the October 7 attack.
Until now, between 1.5 million and 1.8 million people have been receiving assistance every month.
The agency is not only narrowing the number of recipients; it is also trimming what families receive.
Families getting food aid will receive one food parcel instead of two, along with a smaller bag of wheat flour, the WFP said in an operational note.
For the 75,000 families who receive assistance in cash, monthly support will drop from 1,250 to 750 shekels (€340 to €205).
The WFP relies on government funding and private donations, but it says resources have fallen sharply. The agency cited the impact of President Donald Trump returning to power in the United States and drastically cutting contributions to UN agencies, as well as bilateral aid.
Looking ahead, the WFP said it needs about $450m (€385m) over the next six months to run its operations in Gaza and the West Bank, yet in 2026 it has received only about half the usual financing for the Palestinian territories.
In September, the agency also halved the number of people it assists in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, cutting recipients from 400,000 to 200,000.
Israel has allowed increased goods flows into Gaza under the Trump ceasefire, the WFP said, but continues to turn back shipments deemed to have potential military use — a policy the United Nations says has extended to blocking even prosthetic limbs.
Israel has also intensified longstanding criticism of the United Nations since the Gaza war, accusing the world body of bias and of fostering dependency among Palestinians.
