Gaza food security improves post-truce, but shelter crisis looms as winter peaks

Two months into a ceasefire that began in October, Gaza's food situation has stabilized in ways that seemed impossible during the war. The United Nations World Food Programme has managed to feed 1.5 million people monthly through an orderly system of ID cards and distribution centers—a dramatic shift from the chaos of earlier months, when aid trucks were routinely looted and humanitarian workers watched as younger, stronger men grabbed what they could while others went without. Carl Skau, the WFP's deputy director, credits the improvement to a simple fact: more trucks are entering the Strip now, and the routes to get food to people have expanded. When supply increases and distribution becomes predictable, he explained, people stop fighting over scraps.

Yet the broader humanitarian picture remains fractured. As winter peaks, hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans are living in tents and makeshift shelters that flood when heavy rains come. The materials needed to winterize these structures—plastic sheeting, sandbags, insulation—are not being allowed in. Israel restricts these items because they are classified as dual-use goods, meaning they could theoretically be repurposed by Hamas. The UN's International Organization for Migration reported the crisis on Friday. The Israeli Defense Ministry's COGAT agency, which oversees humanitarian access, said it had shipped 270,000 tents and tarpaulins and was working to support winter response, but did not directly address the restrictions on other shelter materials.

The United States established a Civil-Military Coordination Center in southern Israel to monitor the ceasefire and improve aid distribution, but Skau said the center has struggled to resolve the dual-use restrictions that are now the primary obstacle to humanitarian progress. "At the start, there was a lot of good energy in that and a lot of investment," he said. "But so far, it's struggling to resolve problems." The daily average of aid trucks entering Gaza sits at roughly 460—well below the 600 trucks per day specified in the truce agreement. About half carry humanitarian supplies; the other half bring commercial goods. The WFP now handles roughly half of the humanitarian trucks each day, having become the primary food distribution organization after Israel sidelined UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

The WFP's success in reducing looting offers a lesson about what actually drives humanitarian chaos. During the war, when trucks were scarce and routes unpredictable, aid became something people fought over. Skau pointed out that this was not primarily a Hamas theft problem, as Israel had argued, but a supply and access problem. Once supply increased and distribution became orderly, the looting stopped. The contrast with another aid organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, is instructive. The GHF operated distribution centers that required people to walk long distances through militarized zones, and it hired private security contractors who fired on crowds. The result was scenes of desperation—younger men had advantages, and the organization eventually adapted by holding female-only distribution days. The WFP rejected pressure to collaborate with the GHF, Skau said, because mixing humanitarian work with armed security fundamentally changes how communities relate to aid workers. "For us, it was troubling that it became a period there where humanitarian aid was seen as something you need to fight and run for."

Since the ceasefire, aid organizations have opened temporary learning centers where children can attend school and receive meals—the WFP feeds around 250,000 children at these makeshift schools. The meal itself is often the incentive that gets parents to send their children, restoring some semblance of routine after two years of war. But even as food quantities have improved, the variety remains constrained by Israeli restrictions. Markets in Gaza now have food, but it is often junk food—chocolate, Pringles—rather than the fresh fruits and vegetables that are essential for rebuilding the nutrition of a population that endured severe food scarcity. Skau is urging Israel to allow more commercial goods to enter, not just to feed people but to revive Gaza's private sector, which was largely destroyed when farmers and fishermen lost their assets. "This won't cover their entire needs, but it's an important way of also re-establishing a sense of normalcy." He is also pushing for expanded use of electronic payment systems, which he argues are easier to monitor than cash and would reduce the reliance on physical currency that Israel has periodically restricted out of concern that Hamas could exploit it.