Hunger Deepens in the West Bank as UN Halves Food Aid to Displaced Palestinians

For Palestinians in the West Bank who lost their homes to Israeli military operations, hardship is growing. With the World Food Programme (WFP) cutting assistance, hunger has become the biggest crisis facing many families.

In September the agency announced a 50 percent reduction in the number of food aid recipients in the occupied West Bank, citing critical funding constraints resulting from reduced funding from international donors. Food needs, by contrast, have more than doubled since 2023.

The WFP said about 900,000 people in the West Bank are currently suffering from food insecurity. In a statement to Al Jazeera, it confirmed that some families had stopped receiving aid even before the official announcement in September.

Fawza Awad, a 75-year-old widow from Tulkarem, is one of those displaced people. In January 2025 she lost her home in the Tulkarem refugee camp during an Israeli operation targeting refugee camps in the northern West Bank, which forcibly displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians.

With little money, Fawza’s family found shelter in a small, unfinished house in Tulkarem belonging to her daughter. She lives in part of the structure alongside her son, his wife and their child. The family previously relied on the WFP’s limited financial and food assistance, but has received nothing for the past five months.

Fawza said there is no prospect of returning to her old home either — the Israeli army has completely demolished the structure, replacing it with a wide road for its military vehicles. One of her sons has been detained by Israel since 2024, while her other sons, who previously worked inside Israel, are now all unemployed.

Fawza suffers from asthma and high blood pressure, requiring monthly medication costing at least 200 shekels (about 64 dollars), an expense nobody covers for her. The modest food aid the family used to receive was barely enough for two or three people, she said; now it has stopped completely.

More than 1,000 Palestinians displaced from the Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps are sheltering in the al-Muwahhad School building in Tulkarem’s Thannabeh suburb, having found nowhere else to go and being unable to pay rent.

Among them are Rabab Qasim, 47, her husband Talib Abu Sarriya, 72, and their three children. For the second consecutive year they have been living in a small 30-square-metre room on the school’s ground floor, with no source of income and totally reliant on aid. Since the WFP cut, they have received nothing for three months.

Rabab suffers from a herniated disc in her back, requiring monthly treatment costing 300 shekels (about 96 dollars) that she cannot afford. She has never been able to access physical therapy either. She sleeps on a worn-out mattress on the floor; all she wishes for is to be able to buy a bed. Talib said the family often cannot find bread or a meal and frequently go to sleep hungry — a far cry from their former life in the Tulkarem camp, where his small vegetable stall earned enough to get by.

The WFP’s latest quarterly food security analysis indicates that 76 percent of Palestinian households in the West Bank have experienced a significant decline in income. Twelve percent of the population has poor food consumption, and one-third of households cannot afford a healthy diet. Rural areas and the governorates of the southern West Bank are the hardest hit.

Said al-Amour, 61, of Khirbet al-Rakeez in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, and his 14-person family have received no WFP assistance for seven months. In April 2025, while confronting repeated settler attacks on the village, he says he was shot by a settler; the injury led to the amputation of his leg. His monthly medical treatment now costs at least 1,200 shekels (about 385 dollars), which he cannot afford. He has no income other than a few olive trees, which settlers frequently attempt to seize.

Working with partners, the WFP still assists 200,000 Palestinians in the West Bank through cash transfers, food vouchers, direct food supplies, livelihood programmes and nutritional services. But the agency said it simply does not have the resources to cover the needs of all the families requiring assistance.

The agency added that the cessation of aid does not mean a beneficiary is ineligible; rather, it is a broad decision affecting all current beneficiaries regardless of individual assessment. If the situation changes, aid could be reinstated for some, who would then be notified by text message.

Economist and human rights activist Ubai Aboudi said the West Bank faces a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by the loss of WFP food aid and by a financial crisis affecting the Palestinian Authority. Israel has completely withheld the customs revenues it collects on behalf of the Authority since May 2025, leaving it unable to pay public sector salaries.

Aboudi also noted that tens of thousands of Palestinians previously employed in Israel and in illegal West Bank settlements have been out of work since October 2023, when Israel stopped giving them work permits. Israeli restrictions on Palestinian and international NGOs, including the suspension of registration for 37 international organisations and the closure of some local groups, have further limited the ability to provide humanitarian assistance. Around half a million Palestinian families need food assistance, he said, while the actual need may be greater.