The World Food Programme will stop monthly food parcels for roughly 500,000 people in Gaza. The move cuts its caseload from 1.6 million to 1.1 million, the agency said on 19 October 2026. WFP blamed a $386 million funding gap over the next six months. That gap covers nearly 2 million people across Gaza and the West Bank.
The cut is an update to an easing picture reported a week earlier. Assessments at the time suggested Gaza's hunger crisis was retreating from famine thresholds after the October 2025 ceasefire. That improvement has now stalled. WFP's acting executive director, Carl Skau, said the reduction follows from funding, not need. "This is only because we have less funding," he said. He added that "it's not because the needs are going down, and it's not because we aren't able to bring in the food."
Almost a million Palestinians still need food assistance. Food insecurity has more than doubled over three years, WFP figures show. The agency says it is seeking $450 million to sustain operations over the next six months. Remaining aid will prioritise children at risk of malnutrition, the sick and people whose safety is at risk.
A shrinking safety net
WFP has supported up to 90% of Gaza households at points over the past three years. It currently backs about 80% of the territory's bakeries, a role the agency says is now under threat. Since the ceasefire, it had been reaching roughly 1.6 million people a month with food parcels and other assistance, a level the funding shortfall no longer allows. The reduction also follows a separate cut to West Bank aid, halved from 400,000 to 200,000 people, which WFP carried out in September.
Gaza's bakery network has been one of the territory's few reliable sources of affordable bread since the ceasefire. WFP officials have warned that further funding gaps could force some bakeries to close rather than simply reduce output. Flour and fuel subsidies that keep bakery prices low depend on the same funding pool now under strain.
Violence complicates aid delivery
Access has grown harder alongside the funding gap. United Nations teams recorded up to 50 airstrikes and other attacks a day in Gaza over the past week, Skau said. In the West Bank, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project logged an average of 39 incidents a day between 1 and 9 October. That is up from about 20 a day in September. WFP said settler attacks in the past fortnight exceeded all of last year's recorded total. Rising violence and falling funding have made both the delivery and the financing of aid harder at the same time.
Skau said the mood among people he met in Gaza had shifted from hope to exhaustion. "People are beginning to lose hope," he said, adding that "many I spoke to feel forgotten by everyone." The reduction marks a reversal from the cautious optimism in reporting after the ceasefire. Humanitarian access had briefly widened then, and food security indicators improved for the first time in months.
Donor fatigue over Gaza aid has built through 2026 even as needs remain acute, aid officials say. It is a pattern mirrored in other protracted crises, from Sudan to Yemen, that compete for the same shrinking pool of humanitarian funding. WFP has not said how long the reduced caseload will last. It said only that restoring full support depends on fresh pledges arriving before the six-month funding window closes. Humanitarian coordinators in the region say the Gaza shortfall is likely to sharpen debate at upcoming donor conferences over how aid budgets are split between competing emergencies.
