The World Food Programme (WFP) senior official in Palestine, Samer Abdel Jaber, said today (18 Dec) that the situation in Gaza is “very dire. It’s a catastrophe,” adding that the WFP teams were not successful in reaching north of Gaza since the humanitarian pause was ended earlier this month.
Recalling his recent visit to Gaza, the Representative and Country Director of WFP in Palestine said, “We've seen people struggling to actually find food. We've seen people who are struggling to actually find the wood to light fire so that they can actually cook a meal.”

Jaber reiterated, “if the situation continues like this, we know from our food security assessments that basically the situation is very bad. People are coping, moving into negative coping strategies.”

He further explained, “They're skipping meals and they're basically eating whatever they've been able to find at the moment rather than eating what they should be eating.”

The Representative and Country Director of WFP in Palestine also said, “unfortunately, since the pause collapsed, WFP have not been able to reach the north,” adding that the Programme is working with all stakeholders that “can support us in coordinating a convoy to the north. But so far, we have not been successful and we're prioritizing our response in the South for the time being.

On the Kerem Shalom Crossing, Jaber said, “It gives us more options to operate. I think the Egyptian side has been very generous in their support, but it created the bottleneck at the Rafah crossing because of the capacity on the Gazan side to receive the trucks. So, opening another crossing will allow us to actually take things and with scale and allow another route to be functioning so that we bring in aid into Gaza to the scale that is required. So, we welcome it very much and we look forward to see it operational, hopefully tomorrow or the day after with WFP trucks that are planned to go in.”

Funding has been one of the main challenges in 2023 for the World Food Programme, the WFP senior official said.

“There is definitely a donor fatigue that we saw affecting many operations where we had to announce budget cuts. Palestine was one of those operations that in June we had to announce that we were suspending 60 per cent of the assistance because of the funding situation. Of course, it changed completely with the current crisis that we are facing.”

He concluded, “But we see it definitely happening in many other countries across this region and beyond in Yemen, in Syria and Afghanistan and others. So it has been a very challenging year. We are hoping that 2024 will be a better year for the people we serve and hopefully with more efforts in diplomacy to resolve some of the ongoing conflicts, the needs would be reduced.”

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