The WFP, the largest single supplier of food aid to the Gaza Strip, said it will reduce the number of people it helps from 1.6 million to 1.1 million — a cut of about a third. Hot meals provided by community kitchens will drop from 250,000 to 150,000 each day, and families in hard-to-reach areas near the Yellow Line that marks Israel's zone of military control will receive a meal every other day instead of daily.
Since July, cash transfers to some half a million people have already been reduced, and the number of Gazans receiving flour bags and ration boxes will fall from 1.1 million to 600,000 per month. The WFP said it urgently needs $450 million (£338 million) to maintain critical operations over the next six months.
“As we're now entering winter, I'm really worried that we're cutting assistance to half a million people,” WFP acting executive director Carl Skau told the ABC after returning from a visit to Gaza. He said the cuts were driven by funding issues, the size and cost of the operation, and growing demand elsewhere. “There is a sense of donor fatigue,” Skau said, pointing to concurrent conflicts in Sudan and Yemen as well as shipping disruptions and a “super El Niño” pushing up food and energy prices.
Displaced Gazans described the cuts as a disaster. “What will we do with these reduced rations? How will we provide for the little ones?” said Mervat al-Satari, a mother of five living in a camp in al-Mawasi. Sawsan Bahloul, a mother of three, said daily aid “was somehow ticking the box but now it will be every two days.” She added that the portions — usually pasta or lentils — were already too small to feed her family.
The cuts come a year after a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was agreed. Humanitarian conditions remain dire, with no reconstruction and little recovery. Israel tightly controls the entry of goods through crossings. While food markets are now well stocked, few can afford to buy from them. More than 80 percent of people in Gaza are unemployed, and two-thirds rely on food aid to survive, according to UN-backed experts.
According to Israeli authorities, humanitarian aid continues to enter the Gaza Strip daily and the situation is stable. COGAT, the Israeli military arm tasked with Gaza's logistics, said in a recent statement that “Gaza is flooded with humanitarian aid and food supplies.”
Skau acknowledged that food is available in Gaza but said “it's not the right ones.” He said restrictions on bringing in tools and commodities were holding back recovery. The WFP's Palestine director, Shaun Hughes, told the BBC the cuts were due to finances, “not because the needs are coming down, or because we don't have access — we do.”
Despite a modest improvement since the ceasefire, acute food insecurity and the risk of famine continue to loom. In December, the UN lifted its August 2025 famine declaration after the ceasefire allowed enough supplies in over several months. The WFP said it will continue supporting bakeries that provide a third of Gaza's bread needs and nutritional assistance to about 300,000 women and children.