WFP Warns of Gaza Aid Cuts

PHOTO CAPTION: Palestinians gather to receive food from a charity kitchen, in Gaza City, June 2, 2026. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

The U.N. World Food Programme warned Friday that it will have to make deeper cuts to food assistance in Gaza unless it receives additional funding.

WFP currently supports about 70% of Gaza’s population, most of whom depend on humanitarian assistance after two years of war, repeated displacement and severe Israeli restrictions on aid deliveries.

The warning comes after the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global hunger monitor, said more than two-thirds of Gaza’s population could face acute hunger by the end of the year as funding shortages force humanitarian organizations to reduce assistance.

The number of people facing acute hunger fell to 1.2 million between mid-April and the end of June, according to the monitor.

However, it expects that figure to rise to more than 1.4 million people, or 67% of Gaza’s population, by December as aid begins to decline.

“Without sufficient funding, we will be forced to scale back assistance for people who depend on it for survival,” Ross Smith, WFP’s director of emergency preparedness and response, told reporters in Geneva by video from Rome.

Smith said higher operating costs linked to the war in Iran had contributed to the funding pressure by driving up oil prices and disrupting supply chains.

However, he said donor fatigue was the primary problem as global attention shifted elsewhere. He did not provide details about how much funding had been lost.

WFP said it needs more than $420 million to maintain its operations in Gaza and the occupied West Bank through the end of the year.

The agency has already begun reducing assistance.

Cash support for 75,000 people was cut by 25% this month, while food rations for 220,000 households were reduced by half, Smith said.

Without additional funding, WFP will have to impose much deeper cuts by October, he said.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says Israel does not restrict food from entering Gaza. It said Israel has facilitated the delivery of more than 1.8 million tons of food into the enclave since an October 2025 ceasefire.

(Source: Reuters)