WFP Cuts Food Aid to 500,000 People in Gaza as Winter Rain Starts

The World Food Programme is cutting its planned monthly assistance in Gaza by 500,000 people because of funding shortages, as winter rain adds to families' struggle for food and shelter. ^[3][2]

The UN agency says its monthly reach is falling from 1.6 million people to 1.1 million. Those who continue receiving assistance also face reductions, including smaller food parcels, lower cash payments and less frequent hot meals in harder-to-reach areas. ^[3][1]

The cuts put at risk improvements achieved after the October 2025 ceasefire. A UN-backed food-security assessment projects that more than 1.4 million people, about 67 percent of Gaza's population, will face acute food insecurity at Crisis level or worse through December 2026. About 212,000 are projected to remain in the more severe Emergency category. ^[4]

Crisis and Emergency are the assessment's severity levels. At Emergency level, families face severe food shortages or must sell essential possessions and exhaust other resources to get enough to eat.

WFP's emergency coordinator in Gaza, Willy Nyiko, said the reductions reflected a shortage of funding, not a decline in need. The agency is shrinking both the number of people it assists and the amount some households receive. ^[4]

For families with no income, that means losing part or all of the support on which they depend. Fatima Mohamed, a widow and mother of three, told the ABC that she relied on food parcels and cash payments and had no source of earnings. ^[1]

Fewer people, smaller portions

The reduction reaches across several forms of assistance. Families receiving two food parcels will receive one, flour bags will be smaller, and food parcels will be reduced by 40 percent, according to details reported by the ABC. Hot meals in harder-to-reach areas will be provided every other day rather than daily. ^[1]

Cash assistance for 75,000 families will also fall in value by 40 percent. That leaves recipients with three-fifths of their previous payment to buy food and meet other needs. ^[1]

The latest reduction in planned monthly reach, from 1.6 million to 1.1 million, amounts to nearly a third of the larger figure. WFP has been Gaza's largest single supplier of humanitarian food assistance, reaching about 1.6 million people each month since the ceasefire, according to the ABC. ^[3][1]

The agency had already set out cuts in September, due to begin on October 1. At that point, it said its overall monthly reach would fall from an average of 1.5 million people to 1.1 million. Within that total, the number receiving direct food assistance was to drop from 1.1 million to 600,000, while cash assistance would continue for 500,000 people. ^[4]

Those figures measure different things. The overall monthly total includes cash recipients, while direct food assistance counts people receiving food itself. The September announcement and the current figures describe the same intended overall reach of 1.1 million, using different starting totals. ^[3][4]

WFP has not publicly specified which households will lose monthly assistance or how the groups affected by each reduction overlap. It is also not known how much new funding the agency has secured since its September appeal.

Food on sale, hunger at home

Food being available in Gaza does not mean families can afford it. WFP's September market monitor found that 44 percent of households could not afford basic food items because of high prices, according to the ABC. It also found that 44 percent of Palestinians had gone to bed hungry at least once during the previous 30 days. ^[1]

Cash cuts therefore fall on households already struggling to buy what is available. Smaller food parcels leave those same families needing to obtain more elsewhere, even as their purchasing power falls.

Israeli authorities said humanitarian aid continued to enter Gaza daily and described the situation as stable. COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Gaza logistics, said Gaza was flooded with aid and food supplies. ^[1]

Carl Skau, WFP's acting executive director, told the ABC that food was present but was not of the right kinds. He also said restrictions on goods entering Gaza hindered recovery. The agency attributes its current assistance cuts to funding shortages. ^[1][4]

Skau said traditional donors, including the United States and Europe, had reduced funding. Competing crises and rising shipping, food and energy costs were also putting pressure on WFP, he said. ^[1]

On September 1, the agency said it urgently needed an additional $386 million over six months to assist about two million food-insecure people in Gaza and the West Bank. That appeal covered both territories, rather than Gaza alone. ^[4]

Rain adds another pressure

The food-security assessment found that large-scale assistance after the ceasefire had helped improve food security and nutrition. It warned that those gains remained fragile, with reduced aid, collapsed livelihoods and exhausted household coping strategies threatening to reverse them. ^[4]

WFP separately warned in September that failure to maintain assistance could leave as much as 90 percent of Gaza's population facing high levels of acute food insecurity by year-end. That was a warning about further deterioration, distinct from the assessment's projection of about 67 percent through December. ^[4]

Meanwhile, rain has already begun. Around two million people in Gaza need shelter assistance, according to the International Organization for Migration. Families are preparing for winter in damaged buildings and tents, and an IOM regional crisis coordinator said expected deliveries of shelter goods would not meet demand. ^[2]

One displaced man described reusing WFP flour sacks as barriers against floodwater. The packaging from food assistance had become part of his protection from the weather. ^[2]