WFP cuts Gaza food aid by a third, leaving about 500,000 people without assistance as winter nears

The World Food Programme (WFP) said on 19 October that it is cutting food assistance in Gaza by about one third because of funding shortfalls, a reduction that it says will leave roughly half a million people without aid as winter approaches.

According to WFP, the number of people it reaches each month falls from about 1.6 million to 1.1 million. The agency said it “no longer has sufficient funding to sustain this level of support.” Since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire of October 2025, it has supported about 1.6 million people a month.

What changes for families

WFP listed the following measures:

• Families receive one food parcel instead of two, plus a smaller bag of wheat flour.
• Cash assistance is reduced for 75,000 families.
• Daily hot meals fall from 250,000 to 150,000. In hard-to-reach areas, including near the yellow line, meals will be provided every other day.

The agency said its programmes for bakeries, which cover about one third of Gaza’s bread needs, nutrition support for 300,000 women and children, and school snacks for 200,000 students continue.

Food insecurity and funding

WFP reported that about 1.4 million people, or 67 per cent of the population, face crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse, down from 77 per cent at the end of 2025. It described the improvement as “modest and fragile.” About 200,000 people are in emergency conditions, and it said that more than 80 per cent of people are unemployed and that only one in five children eats a sufficiently diverse diet.

The agency said it needs USD 450 million to maintain critical operations in Gaza and the West Bank from October 2026 to March 2027, and that its 2026 funding for Palestine is less than half of previous years. In the West Bank, the number of people receiving WFP assistance was halved in September, from 400,000 to 200,000.

The announcement comes days after the UN humanitarian office OCHA described the winter preparations in the Strip; see our earlier report, OCHA: Gaza braces for winter as attacks continue and aid access stays restricted.

All figures above are WFP’s own, as published in its statement of 19 October. WFP warned that recent gains “remain fragile and could quickly be reversed if humanitarian funding continues to decline.”