WFP to cut food aid for Gaza, West Bank

The United Nations' World Food Program (WFP) says it would cut food aid to around 190,000 impoverished Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank - half of all its recipients there- due to funding shortages.

The UN food agency on Wednesday blamed the funding shortages on cuts by the United States, the agency's biggest contributor, and other nations in aid to Palestinians.

"WFP has been forced, unfortunately, to make drastic cuts to the number of people that we support across Palestine, both in Gaza and the West Bank," Stephen Kearney, WFP country director in the Palestinian Territories, told Reuters.

The cuts in food assistance will reportedly take place starting January 1.

Food assistance provided to 27,000 people in the West Bank would be suspended, the WFP said, adding that food aid to 165,000 people in the Israeli-occupied territory and in Gaza would be slashed by 20 percent.

Kearney said the agency was making the cutbacks "mainly because the amount of funding that we are receiving is dropping drastically.”

"It's not just WFP, it's across the whole humanitarian community as donor contributions significantly fall," he added.

On Monday, the UN and the Palestinian Authority appealed for $350 million in humanitarian relief for Palestinians next year, noting that much more was needed but they had to be realistic after a year of funding cuts, especially by the Trump administration, which has taken an increasingly hard-line stance toward Palestine.

Kearney said the UN agency needs $57 million to continue providing the current level of food assistance to 360,000 people in 2019.

"The people that we do reach are the most vulnerable across Palestine, and we appreciate that we are going to put further anxiety on these families," he said.

Fawzi Barhoum, spokesman for the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, that runs Gaza, called on the United Nations to "continue to provide the needs of the Palestinian people until they regain their freedom and not take decisions that worsen their suffering".

SS