West Bank food needs more than doubled since 2023 as U.N. halves its reach due to funding shortages

The United Nations’ food agency said Tuesday it is halving food assistance in the Israeli-occupied West Bank because of severe funding shortages and warned it may be forced to make further cuts in Gaza, where it supports 1.5 million people.

The U.N.

World Food Program said it will reduce assistance in the West Bank from 400,000 people to 200,000 beginning this month.

In Gaza, it reduced the value of cash assistance by 40% for 375,000 people in July and said additional cuts will be unavoidable unless it secures new funding.

“In Gaza we’ve already had to start reducing the amount of cash that we’re giving to around 75,000 families,” Claire Nevill, WFP spokesperson for the Palestinian territories, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

“Now, the same is happening for WFP’s West Bank operation.” WFP said it urgently needs an additional $386 million over the next six months to assist an estimated 2 million food-insecure people across Gaza and the West Bank.

“All of this pressure has been building in terms of the economic downturn coupled with increasing settler violence and incursions on land, people sort of losing access to their livestock and agricultural land, which has also now had an impact on people’s food security,” Nevill said.

“So just as the situation is getting worse and we should be scaling up to meet these needs, we’re unfortunately having to scale back and effectively halve the amount of people that we can reach because of the lack of funding,” she added.

The world’s leading authority on food insecurity, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, said in July the situation in Gaza had improved since famine was declared in parts of the Palestinian territory last year, but warned conditions were still at crisis levels.

Also in July, the WFP cautioned that funding shortages and what it described as donor fatigue could force deeper reductions in Gaza and said it needed more than $420 million to sustain operations in Gaza and the West Bank through the end of the year.

In the West Bank, WFP estimated in its Tuesday report that 900,000 people are food insecure.

The agency said increased violence, displacement and economic deterioration have disrupted livelihoods and deepened hunger, while food needs have more than doubled since 2023.

“Families who were once thriving and earning a living from their land are now unable to afford enough food,” Shaun Hughes, WFP’s country director, said in a statement Tuesday.

He added the agency was being forced to prioritize the most vulnerable households while cutting assistance to others despite widespread need.