BEIT HANINA: The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Monday that it would end monthly assistance to half a million people in Gaza due to a funding shortfall, despite acute needs in the war-battered Palestinian territory.

Following the cuts, around 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza about half the population will be receiving reduced amounts of food or cash assistance each month.

The WFP said its efforts had mitigated the effects of last year`s famine, and warned that conditions had not improved to the point that it can afford to take away aid.

`This has been a lifeline. But now, rather than being able to sustain andscale up that assistance, we`re actually having to reduce it,` Shaun Hughes, the WFP country director, said.`That`s not because we don`t have humanitarian access to deliver food; that`s because wedon`t have funding.

The agency says it needs about $450 million over the next six months for its operations in Gaza and the West Bank, but in 2026 it has only received about half the usual financing for the Palestinian territories.

In September, the agency also reduced by half the number of aid recipients in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, from 400,000 to 200,000.

`Now is not the time in the history of Palestine and Gaza to turn away from what is happening in Gaza, Hughes said.

According to the latest assessments, 1.4 million people or twothirds of Gaza`s population are still `acutely food insecure` and need humanitarian assistance to survive, he said.

Alarm among Palestinians Those living in Gaza, where nearly the entire population has been displaced at least once, voiced alarm at the cuts in assistance.

`The hardest thing for a mother isto see her children hungry and be unable to provide food for them,` said Samaher al-Najjar, 45, from the southern city of Khan Younis.

`We live in a tent and do not have the money to buy everything we need. We rely on aid to provide part of our food,` she said.

`All we want is for our children to have something to eat every day. The consequences of this would be extremely difficult.

Ayman Daghmash, 40, from Gaza City called news of the cutoffs `frightening`.

`The assistance helped us get by for several days, but now we do not know how we will meet our family`s needs, especially after community kitchens in Gaza stopped operating some time ago,` he said.

`There is also no work or steady income, and food prices are beyond our means. If assistance stops coming from every direction, how will we feed our children?` Between 1.5 million and 1.8 million people have been receivingassistance every month.

Reducing rations The WFP was able to bring in more assistance after a US-brokered ceasefire took effect a year ago, but Israel has kept striking Gaza since then.

In addition to reducing the number of people who receive rations, the WFP will scale down the contents of its assistance packages.

Families receiving food assistance will now get only one food parcel instead of two and a smaller bag of wheat flour, the WFP said in an operational note.

The 75,000 families who receive assistance in cash will see the amount reduced from 1,250 to 750 shekels ($400 to $240) per month.

The WFP is funded by governments as well as private donors. It has seen a sharp drop in resources, including after President Donald Trump returned to power in the United States and drastically slashed contributions to UN agencies, as well as bilateral aid.-AFP