The United Nations’ food agency said Tuesday it is halving food assistance in the Israeli-occupied West Bank because of severe funding shortages and warned it may be forced to make further cuts in Gaza, where it supports 1.5 million people.
The U.N. World Food Program said it will reduce assistance in the West Bank from 400,000 people to 200,000 beginning this month. In Gaza, it reduced the value of cash assistance by 40% for 375,000 people in July and said additional cuts will be unavoidable unless it secures new funding.
“In Gaza we’ve already had to start reducing the amount of cash that we’re giving to around 75,000 families,” Claire Nevill, WFP spokesperson for the Palestinian territories, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “Now, the same is happening for WFP’s West Bank operation.”
WFP said it urgently needs an additional $386 million over the next six months to assist an estimated 2 million food-insecure people across Gaza and the West Bank.
“All of this pressure has been building in terms of the economic downturn coupled with increasing settler violence and incursions on land, people sort of losing access to their livestock and agricultural land, which has also now had an impact on people’s food security,” Nevill said.
