Amid ongoing Israeli military strikes, recurring security incidents, forced displacement, and increasing movement restrictions, aid agencies warn that the humanitarian situation across Gaza remains catastrophic. These dire conditions continue to disrupt humanitarian operations, limiting access to food, water, shelter, healthcare, and other essential services while heightening protection risks for those affected.
Critical funding gaps further compound the situation by constraining the ability of humanitarian organizations to sustain and scale up their responses, despite the growing needs across Gaza. Obstruction of relief by Israeli authorities leads to shortages of critical supplies, including engine oil and animal feed, which further undermine water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services, food security, and agricultural recovery.
Aid restrictions and severe funding shortages cripple the humanitarian response
Earlier this week, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said that people who are forced to move risk losing access to basic services and assistance. WFP called for a safe environment in which to reach people in need.
Despite ongoing obstruction and impediments, the UN and its humanitarian partners provided general food assistance to over a quarter million people across 36 distribution sites in Gaza in the first two weeks of this month.
Shelter remains a critical need. Humanitarians across the territory continue to provide shelter assistance to displaced families. In the past month alone, more than 378,000 items, including tarpaulins, cleaning kits, and jerrycans, were received and distributed by 30 aid agencies.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), around 1.4 million people are estimated to require long-term shelter support, including 850,000 people in need of emergency shelter.
However, OCHA warns that without additional funding, depleted stockpiles cannot be replenished, which puts vulnerable families at greater risk, particularly as humanitarian organizations prepare for winter. Currently, only a small fraction of the required winter stock is estimated to be available.
In other sectors, some relief operations continue to scale up. On Thursday, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced that it has expanded its cash assistance program to support 1,500 Palestinian farmers in cultivating land throughout the territory during the 2026 planting season. The program aims to help farmers produce enough fresh vegetables for more than 100,000 people and improve access to nutritious food for vulnerable communities.
Meanwhile, humanitarian organizations that provide educational services continued to distribute learning and teaching supplies to students and teachers. More than 5,400 educational kits, including copybooks, markers, and pencils, will support the learning activities of approximately 218,000 girls and boys this summer.
On Friday, OCHA reported that humanitarian organizations continue to deliver water to displaced families. Currently, aid agencies are delivering more than 17,000 cubic meters of drinking water by truck each day through 2,460 distribution points.
However, OCHA warns that this is 15 to 20 percent less than in June, mainly due to funding shortages. This reduction comes at a time when needs are highest and the risk of water shortages is greatest during the summer.
Humanitarian organizations are also distributing over 4,600 cubic meters of domestic water daily for washing, cleaning, and other household needs. They are tirelessly working to address gaps and prevent further reductions in access to safe water.
UN agencies and non-governmental organizations have repeatedly warned that the conflict has had a catastrophic humanitarian impact. Although the ceasefire reduced direct harm to civilians from Israeli military strikes on Gaza, the situation there remains disastrous. Civilians continue to bear the brunt of ongoing military activities and repeated forced displacement.
Despite nominal ceasefire agreement, civilian casualties keep mounting
While the ceasefire, established on October 10, 2025, reduced the overall scale of active warfare, its impact on civilians remains disastrous. Civilians continue to be attacked, killed, and injured almost daily in airstrikes, shelling, and gunfire. Since the ceasefire took effect, Gaza health officials report that more than 1,120 people have been killed and over 3,600 injured by Israeli forces.
Considering the broader conflict since October 2023, Israeli military forces have killed over 73,000 Palestinians and injured more than 173,000 in Gaza. An estimated 43,000 of those injured have suffered life-changing disabilities. Among the confirmed fatalities are over 21,200 children, and an estimated 58,000 children have lost one or both parents.
The true death toll is believed to be higher. Verified casualties also include at least 595 aid workers, 401 UN staff members, 1,700 health care workers, and 260 journalists.
Israeli military airstrikes and attacks reportedly occur on both sides of the Yellow Line, which marks the deployment line where Israeli forces withdrew in accordance with the ceasefire agreement. However, the Yellow Line continues to be moved further into Gaza by Israeli forces, who now control an estimated 70 percent of the territory.
Israel's actions are forcing Palestinians into ever-smaller pockets of land, raising serious concerns about ethnic cleansing as a crime against humanity targeting the civilian population or as an ongoing genocide against Palestinians.
Systematic atrocities and lack of accountability
Last month, a United Nations commission of inquiry issued a report stating that Israeli authorities and security forces are still committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the Gaza Strip. This follows the commission's conclusion last year that Israel was perpetrating genocide against Palestinians in Gaza as a group.
The updated report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel emphasizes that Israeli military operations have continued on a large scale and in a systematic manner, resulting in unprecedented death, injury, and trauma to Palestinian children.
The Commission reiterated that the deliberate targeting of children is key to establishing the genocidal intent of Israeli authorities and security forces to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza, either wholly or in part. According to international law, Israeli authorities are obligated to uphold children's rights in all areas under their jurisdiction or control, including occupied territories.
A previous report found evidence that Israeli authorities and security forces have committed four categories of acts that constitute genocide in the Gaza Strip with the intent to destroy the Palestinian group in whole or in part. These acts include killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life on the group that are calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part.
These conclusions mirror the findings of several international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and the International Federation for Human Rights, as well as Israeli human rights organizations such as B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.
Independent human rights experts and the world’s leading genocide scholars have also found that Israel's actions in Gaza not only constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, but also qualify as genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza.
Against this backdrop, human rights groups and humanitarian organizations across the globe are expressing mounting concern over the ongoing impunity enjoyed by Israeli military personnel and government officials for perpetrating international atrocity crimes.
Impunity for crimes committed since October 2023 persists, with profound political consequences. Governments around the world, particularly those aiding the Israeli government militarily and politically, are implicating themselves in some of the worst crimes known to humankind.