U.N. food agency to halve West Bank food aid amid funding crisis, warns of Gaza cuts

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 Programme 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.

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.

The world’s leading authority on food insecurity, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, said in July the situation in Gaza had improved since famine was declared in parts of the Palestinian territory last year, but warned conditions were still at crisis levels.

Also in July, the WFP cautioned that funding shortages and what it described as donor fatigue could force deeper reductions in Gaza and said it needed more than $420 million to sustain operations in Gaza and the West Bank through…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/world