Yolando Nel, Middle East correspondent (Jerusalem, Israel)
The World Food Program (WFP), the main agency that supplies food to the Palestinian and Gaza Strip, says it has been forced to "drastically reduce life-saving assistance" to Gaza due to a lack of funding.
According to the United Nations organization WFP, the number of people it can support will be reduced by about 30% from the current 1.6 million to 1.1 million.
In Gaza, many families are still struggling to find food as winter approaches. The latest reduction in support will be implemented to coincide with this.
One of the things that will be affected is the provision of hot meals at community kitchens. Currently, 250,000 meals are provided per day, but this will be reduced to 150,000 in the future.
Families in areas hard to reach by aid agencies will now receive meals every other day, rather than every day as in the past. Such areas include areas around the Yellow Line, the demarcation line between Israeli military-controlled areas.
Almost all of the Gaza Strip's 2.1 million people are still forced to live as refugees. Two-thirds rely on food aid to survive.
"It's a disaster! Rations have been cut, what are we going to do? How are we going to feed our young children?" At a camp for displaced people in al-Mawasi district in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, Mervat al-Satari, a mother of five, lamented the WFP announcement. "We sometimes wait for these rations to eat."
"It has had a big impact on us," said Southan Bahrul, a mother of three. "We managed to get by with daily support, but from now on, it will be once every two days." He added that even now, the meals provided by community kitchens - usually pasta or lentils, sometimes with potatoes or eggplant - are too small to feed families.
Sean Hughes, head of WFP's Palestine office, explained that the reduction in support was due to financial reasons. ``It's not because the needs are decreasing or because we can't go to the site. It's possible to go to the site.''
Cash benefits for around 500,000 people have already been reduced since July. For residents, this means they have less cash to buy food at local markets. Approximately 1.1 million Gazans receive bags of flour and boxes of food supplies from WFP each month, but this number is expected to decrease to around 600,000 each month.
WFP says that its funding for operations in Palestine in 2026 will be less than half of what it was in previous years. It also said it urgently needed $450 million (about 71 billion yen) to sustain "essential" operations over the next six months.
A year ago, the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel agreed to a ceasefire. However, violence continues, with Israel conducting airstrikes on a daily basis, and the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip remains dire.
No progress has been made in reconstruction or recovery. Israel strictly controls the entry of goods into Gaza at checkpoints. Food markets are now plentiful, but few people can buy them. More than 80% of people in the Gaza Strip are unemployed, and most residents rely on aid.
Families currently receiving WFP food distributions told the BBC that there is not enough quantity and little variety.
"We don't have enough flour, we don't have enough food ration boxes." Dalal al-Dadou, the mother of a family of eight living in the ruins of their Gaza City home, said: He fears that the new reduction in support will have a "significant impact."
Al-Dadou contrasts the current desperate situation with life before the war. "Before, thankfully, we had our own home and were living a wonderful life. We had fresh vegetables, proper sanitation, and our own land," she said, "but now we rely on aid for everything, including WFP vouchers."
There is no cooking gas in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government considers the gas to be a "dual-use" commodity that could be used by Hamas for military purposes. Because firewood is expensive, many families let their children search for plastic or cardboard on the street. We burn it to make bread and heat food.
"The humanitarian situation remains very worrying, with people living in dire conditions, with most people living in tents without decent shelter, and with poor access to water, sanitation and health care," WFP Palestine representative Hughes told the BBC.
"Reductions in food assistance will exacerbate the hardships many families have faced over the past three years."
Humanitarian workers say the situation in Gaza has improved slightly since a year ago, but severe food insecurity and the risk of renewed famine still weigh heavily in the area.
The Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC), created by the world's leading experts on food security, reports that approximately 1.4 million people, or two-thirds of Gaza's population, are "expected to face severe food insecurity at crisis level or worse from July to December 2026."
For now, WFP says it is able to continue supporting bakeries, which supply 30% of Gaza's bread needs, and provide nutritional support to around 300,000 women and children. It also provides healthy snacks to approximately 200,000 children.
In the West Bank, where Israel continues to occupy the West Bank, WFP halved the number of people eligible for assistance in September, but continues to provide assistance to approximately 200,000 Palestinians.
According to WFP, food insecurity is on the rise in the West Bank, largely due to violence by Israeli settlers and a growing number of displaced Palestinians.
(English article Funding shortages force World Food Programme to cut aid to Gaza)
