Gaza: needs remain immense despite humanitarian scale-up – OCHA

07 November 2025

Gaza: needs remain immense despite humanitarian scale-up

OCHA says that despite significant progress on the humanitarian scale-up in Gaza,* people’s urgent needs are still immense, with impediments not being lifted quickly enough.

Since the ceasefire and as of this Monday, the UN and its partners have collected more than 37,000 metric tons of aid from Gaza’s crossings – mostly food – according to the UN 2720 Mechanism. This figure excludes bilateral donations and the commercial sector.

Entry continues to be limited to only two crossings, with no direct access from Israel to northern Gaza or from Egypt to southern Gaza. This is on top of certain items and NGO staff not being let in.

Partners leading on the shelter response say that most displaced people remain in overcrowded makeshift sites – many of which were established spontaneously in open or unsafe areas. Hundreds of thousands of families face the onset of the rainy season without desperately needed protection from the elements.

Partners working on shelter support say that once impediments are lifted, they have enough materials in the pipeline to meet most of the needs of nearly 1.5 million Palestinians requiring such assistance.

On the food front, there has been clear progress. Since the ceasefire, the World Food Programme (WFP) has reached over 1 million people with food distributions, hot meals, bakery support, fortified snacks for children, expanded nutrition services and digital cash assistance.

WFP expanded storage capacity to three warehouses, reopened key roads, and reinforced retail networks to sustain food assistance. The agency says that food has been delivered in all parts of Gaza.

However, local food production remains challenging, given widespread damage to farmland and soil being contaminated with remnants of war. Only 13 per cent of cropland in the Gaza Strip has not been damaged, and most of it remains inaccessible because it is located in areas where the Israeli military remains deployed. That figure is from a recent geospatial analysis by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the UN Satellite Centre.

Between 79 and 89 per cent of greenhouse areas, agricultural wells and farming infrastructure have been damaged. Nearly 89 per cent of orchard trees, especially olive trees, have been damaged or – in most cases – destroyed.

West Bank: increasing settler attacks imperil Palestinians 

OCHA warns of a sharp rise in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, both in frequency and severity.

Last month, OCHA recorded 264 settler attacks that caused casualties, property damage or both. That marks the highest monthly toll in nearly two decades of record-keeping – averaging more than eight incidents every day.

Since 2006, OCHA has documented over 9,600 such attacks. About 1,500 of them took place just this year, roughly 15 per cent of the total.

The humanitarian impact has been severe. Since October 2023, more than 3,200 Palestinians have been displaced due to settler violence and related access restrictions. Entire herding communities have been completely depopulated. People have been killed and hundreds injured – including with live fire – and many more have lost access to their livelihoods. The attacks often involve vandalizing trees, cars, homes and infrastructure.

OCHA also receives daily reports of other settler actions – involving intimidation, trespassing, threats and harassment – that are not reflected in the published figures but nevertheless fuel the coercive environment that pushes Palestinians off their farmland and out of their homes and communities.

This morning, two Palestinian boys were shot and killed by Israeli forces, who said the children were throwing a Molotov cocktail on a road. Another child fatality was reported yesterday in a separate incident. According to OCHA-confirmed data as of Wednesday, the number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank so far this year has reached 42. That means one in every five Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in 2025 has been a child.