Palestinians walking in front of a UN center in the West Bank
UN halves food aid in West Bank amid crisis
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- Food insecurity in the West Bank has more than doubled since 2023, with around 900,000 Palestinians now facing severe food shortages.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced Tuesday that critical funding constraints have forced the agency to cut its food assistance by half in the occupied West Bank, reducing the number of Palestinian beneficiaries from 400,000 to just 200,000 starting September 2026.
The drastic reduction comes as acute food insecurity across the occupied West Bank has more than doubled since 2023, leaving an estimated 900,000 Palestinians facing severe food shortages.
The crisis has been further exacerbated by escalating 'Israeli' settler violence, military raids, land confiscations, and movement restrictions that continue to destroy livelihoods and forcibly displace entire rural communities
Read more: 'Israeli' colonel says he is "not sorry" for killing seven aid workers in Gaza
Deteriorating economic conditions
According to WFP’s latest food security analysis, 76 percent of Palestinian households in the West Bank have experienced a sharp drop in income, while food and fuel prices remain among the highest in the region.
The agency reported that one-third of families in the West Bank can no longer afford a basic nutritious diet due to the severe economic decline enforced by the occupation, with rural communities and southern governorates suffering the most severe impacts.
“Families who were once thriving and earning a living from their land are now unable to afford enough food,” said Shaun Hughes, WFP Country Director for Palestine.
“At a time when WFP should be scaling up assistance to reach more people, we are being forced to make difficult decisions, prioritizing the most vulnerable while cutting assistance to others despite widespread needs.”
The funding crisis is also severely crippling operations in the Gaza Strip, where WFP supports 1.5 million Palestinians facing the aftermath of 'Israel's' genocidal war.
WFP reduced the cash value of its food vouchers for 375,000 Gazans by 40 percent, warning that further cuts will be unavoidable without immediate international funding.
The agency urgently requested $386 million in immediate funding to sustain basic food support operations for two million food-insecure Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank through the next six months.
