The World Food Programme (WFP), one of the main suppliers of food aid to the Gaza Strip, says it is being forced to “drastically reduce lifesaving assistance” to the Palestinian territory because of funding shortages. Overall, the number of people the UN agency helps will fall by about a third, from 1.6 million to 1.1 million.
The cuts will take effect as winter approaches, at a time when many families in Gaza are still struggling to feed themselves. Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.1 million people remain displaced, and two-thirds rely on food aid to survive.
How the WFP plans to reduce food assistance in Gaza
The agency says the number of hot meals served daily by community kitchens will drop from 250,000 to 150,000. Families in hard-to-reach areas, including those near the so-called Yellow Line, which marks the boundary of Israel’s area of military control, will receive a meal every other day instead of every day.
Other reductions are already under way or planned. The WFP has cut cash transfers since July to some half a million people, leaving them with less money to buy food in local markets. The number of Gazans receiving bags of flour and ration boxes will fall from 1.1 million to 600,000 each month.
Families describe shrinking rations and growing hardship
Mervat al-Satari, a displaced mother of five living at a camp in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, described the cuts as a “disaster” after being told of the WFP’s decision. “What will we do with these reduced rations? How will we provide for the little ones?” she said. “Sometimes we wait for these meals to eat.”
Sawsan Bahloul, a mother of three from al-Mawasi, said the change would hit her family hard. She said the daily aid had been somewhat adequate, but that every-two-day distribution would be a serious shift. She added that the portions from the community kitchen, usually pasta or lentils with occasional potatoes and aubergines, were already too small to feed her family.
Dalal al-Dahdouh, who lives with her family of eight in the ruins of her home in Gaza City, said the flour and food boxes were not enough even before the reductions. She fears the new cuts will have “a major impact”. She contrasted the present with life before the war, when her family had its own home, fresh vegetables, proper sanitation and its own land. “Now we live entirely on aid, including WFP vouchers,” she said.
Families are also struggling to cook. The Israeli government considers cooking gas a “dual use” item that could be used by Hamas for military purposes, and no cooking gas is available in Gaza. Wood is expensive, so many families send their children into the streets to collect plastic and cardboard to burn as fuel for making bread or heating food.
Funding gap and fragile conditions behind the aid cuts
The WFP’s Palestine director, Shaun Hughes, said the cuts were driven by finances. “Not because the needs are coming down, or because we don’t have access – we do,” he said. Hughes described the humanitarian situation as still very concerning, with most people still without proper homes, living in tents, and facing poor access to water, sanitation and healthcare. He said cuts to food assistance would add to hardships families have faced for three years.
According to the agency, the WFP received less than half the funding for its Palestinian operations in 2026 compared with previous years. It says it urgently needs $450m (£338m) to maintain what it calls “critical” operations over the next six months.
A ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was agreed a year ago, but humanitarian conditions remain dire. Reconstruction has not begun and recovery has been limited, with Israel tightly controlling the entry of goods through crossings. Food markets are now well stocked, but few people can afford to buy from them, and more than 80% of people in Gaza are unemployed.
Humanitarian workers say acute food insecurity and the risk of famine returning still loom over the territory, despite a modest improvement compared with a year ago. In July, the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC), which describes itself as a leading authority on food security, reported that two-thirds of the population, or 1.4 million people, were expected to face crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity from July to December 2026.
For now, the WFP says it can keep supporting bakeries that provide one-third of Gaza’s bread needs, deliver nutritional assistance to about 300,000 women and children, and provide health food snacks to some 200,000 children. In the occupied West Bank, it continues to assist about 200,000 Palestinians, having halved the number of recipients in September. The agency says food insecurity is rising there, mainly due to increased Israeli settler violence and Palestinian displacement.
