UN food agency cuts Gaza aid to 1.1 million as funding runs short

What the WFP is cutting

The World Food Programme said on Monday, 19 October 2026, that a shortage of money forces it to shrink its operations in Gaza. Monthly assistance falls from 1.6 million people to 1.1 million, a cut of about a third that leaves 500,000 people without food aid. Rations for those still served are halved, so each family receives one food parcel instead of two, plus a smaller bag of wheat flour. Cash assistance is reduced for about 75,000 families, and the reductions take effect from October 2026.

Hot meals and remaining support

Hot meals are also cut sharply, from 250,000 a day to 150,000. Families in hard-to-access areas, including those near the yellow line where Israeli troops are deployed under the October 2025 agreement, will receive a hot meal every second day instead of every day. The WFP says it can still support bakeries that cover a third of Gaza's bread needs, while continuing nutrition support for 300,000 women and children and healthy school meals for 200,000 children. The West Bank is affected too: in September the agency halved the number of people it helps there, from 400,000 to 200,000. The agency says the cuts come as winter approaches.

Hunger levels and the funding gap

About 1.4 million people, or 67% of Gaza's population, face acute food insecurity at crisis level or worse, the WFP says, and a further 200,000 are in the emergency phase. That is fewer than the 1.6 million in this situation at the end of 2025, but the agency calls the improvement modest and fragile. So far this year the WFP has received less than half of the funding it relied on in earlier years for its work in the Palestinian territories. It needs $450 million over the next six months to keep essential operations running. The agency blames donor fatigue and rising prices for the shortfall.

Conditions on the ground

Israel also blocks the import of many goods, including building materials and food, and Israeli naval vessels keep Palestinian fishermen from the sea, leaving fish scarce. Shaun Hughes told AFP that airstrikes continue daily and that almost everyone still lacks a permanent home. A US-brokered ceasefire took effect a year ago, but strikes have continued since then. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) declared famine in Gaza in August 2025, and after the October ceasefire brought more aid, the UN said by the end of the year that the territory was no longer in famine. Around 80% of adult residents are unemployed.

Voices from Gaza

Shaun Hughes, the WFP country director, put the problem plainly.

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.

He stressed that the cut is caused by a lack of funding, not by a lack of humanitarian access to deliver food. Samaher al-Najjar, a 45-year-old mother from Khan Yunis, said the hardest thing for a mother is watching her children go hungry without being able to feed them. Ayman Daghmash, 40, from Gaza City, called the news frightening and said community kitchens in Gaza stopped operating some time ago. He asked how families would feed their children if aid stopped coming from every direction.