GAZA (Al Jazeera) – The message Aisha Abu Obeid received on her mobile in early May hit her like a thunderbolt. Her monthly food voucher from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), it said, would be stopped next month.
“I felt like my soul was leaving me,” said the mother of seven whose husband is unemployed. “This voucher used to cover my family’s monthly basic food needs. I look forward to it at the beginning of each month.”
For a year and a half, Aisha’s family had been receiving a food voucher from the WFP worth $108 per month, which covered their basic needs of food and vegetables.
The WFP announced in a statement that by June 200,000 people – almost 60 percent of the beneficiaries in Palestine – will no longer be receiving food assistance due to a severe funding shortage.
The funding crunch has already forced WFP to cut cash assistance by about 20 percent this month. And by August, the agency will be forced to suspend operations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza if no funding is received.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Samer Abdeljaber, WFP representative and country director in Palestine, told Al Jazeera. “We have no option but to stretch the limited resources we have to ensure that the needs of the most vulnerable families are met. They will go hungry without food assistance.”
He said the WFP urgently needs $51m to maintain its aid in Palestine until the end of the year. For families like Aisha’s, that help is a lifeline central to their survival amid a storm of never-ending crises linked to the Zionist regime’s illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
A few days after she received the WFP alert on her phone, Aisha’s house was destroyed in the latest aggression by Zionists in the Gaza Strip.
It is a sentiment echoed by the WFP in its statement, which said, “Vulnerable families in Gaza and the West Bank have been pushed to the limits by the combined effects of growing insecurity, a deteriorating economy, and the rising cost of living that is driving food insecurity up.”
It said 1.84 million Palestinians, or 35 percent of the population, did not have enough food.
“We urge government donors and the private sector to continue their support to WFP during this difficult time,” said Abdeljaber.