The World Food Programme said Monday it would end monthly assistance to 500,000 people in Gaza due to a funding shortfall, despite acute needs in the war-torn Palestinian territory.
The cutbacks mean 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza, about half the population, will receive either food or cash assistance each month from the U.N. agency in reduced amounts.
The WFP said its efforts mitigated the effects of a famine last year in Gaza – a description Israel disputed – and warned conditions had not improved enough to withdraw aid.
"People are not safe. Airstrikes continue daily. People remain displaced," Shaun Hughes, the WFP country director, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in East Jerusalem.
"Almost everyone remains without a permanent home. The humanitarian conditions are brutal," he said.
Latest assessments show 1.4 million people, two-thirds of Gaza's population, are still "acutely food insecure" and need humanitarian aid to survive, he said.
Last August, the U.N.'s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification reported Gaza suffered famine conditions.
Israel, which has blockaded and waged a genocidal war on the territory since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas incursion, described the finding as a lie.
The classification was lifted in December, two months after a U.S.-brokered cease-fire was announced in Gaza. Israel, however, has continued striking Gaza since then.
Since the cease-fire, the WFP stepped up assistance, reaching between 1.5 million and 1.8 million people monthly.
"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," Hughes said.
"That's not because we don't have humanitarian access to deliver food; that's because we don't have funding."
Less aid for each recipient
In addition to reducing the number of ration recipients, the WFP also has reduced ration content.
Families receiving food assistance will now get one food parcel instead of two, along with a smaller bag of wheat flour, the WFP said in an operational note.
The 75,000 families receiving cash assistance will see amounts reduced from 1,250 to 750 shekels ($400 to $240) monthly.
The WFP is funded by governments and private donors. It has seen a sharp drop in resources, including when President Donald Trump's administration drastically slashed contributions to U.N. agencies and bilateral aid.
The agency says it needs about $450 million over the next six months for its operations in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, but this year it has received only about half the usual funding for the Palestinian territories.
In September, the agency also halved the number of aid recipients in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, from 400,000 to 200,000.
"Now is not the time in the history of Palestine and Gaza to turn away from what is happening in Gaza," Hughes said.
The WFP says conditions have moderately improved in Gaza but notes needs could rise again with the onset of winter.
Israel has allowed more goods into Gaza under the terms of a U.S.-brokered cease-fire but still imposes heavy restrictions, turning away shipments of anything with alleged military use – a policy that has included blocking even prosthetic limbs, the United Nations says.
Israel, meanwhile, has ramped up longstanding criticism of the United Nations since the Gaza war, accusing the world body of bias and perpetuating dependency among Palestinians.