U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs occupied Palestinian Territory
New report and snapshot on humanitarian response during the second month of the ceasefire
5 January 2026
Dear partners,
Today, we release a narrative report and a snapshot (infographic) on humanitarian response delivered by the UN and its partners during the second month of the October 2025 Ceasefire.
During the second month of the ceasefire, the UN and its partners:
brought into Gaza nearly 85,000 pallets of humanitarian supplies;
served up to 1.5 million cooked meals daily and reached nearly 1.3 million people with household-level monthly general food assistance in November;
supported almost 321,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under five with nutrient supplements to prevent malnutrition;
set up 120 intensive care and emergency beds, and provided 30 anaesthesia machines and 40 portable vital-sign monitors to health facilities, alongside critical medicines and consumables;
assisted over 237,750 children under the age of 11 with winter clothing kits; and
reached nearly 62,000 additional households with US$24 million-worth of multi-purpose cash assistance.
Despite a significant increase the volume of supplies entering Gaza, administrative and bureaucratic impediments continued during the second month of the ceasefire. These impediments slowed the response and prevented the entry of aid and restoration of services at the scale to meet immense needs following two years of intense conflict, destruction and displacement. While the amount of emergency food and nutrition supplies increased significantly, the entry of shelter items, water and sanitation equipment, agricultural inputs, construction materials and education supplies has remained limited.
An earlier report and snapshot covering the first month of the ceasefire can be found here.
We hope you find this useful.
Best regards,
OCHA OPT team
Biweekly Brief. January 5, 2026
More wars and mass ethnic cleansing appear to be on the 2026 Israel-US agenda
“There are surveys that say that almost 90% of the population of the world wants this to stop,” the Indian writer Arundhati Roy said about Israel’s Gaza genocide on Democracy Now! “But there is no connection between democratically elected governments and the will of the people. It’s ended. So the whole charade of Western liberal democracy is as much of a corpse under the rubble as the tens of thousands of Palestinians.”
Thanks in part to the ‘Palestine exception’ to freedom of expression which has served as a catalyst to a range of repressive policies, the vaunted ideals of liberal democracy are now seeming as hollow in the West as they have long appeared to formerly colonized nations of the Global South. One need look no further than the way Palestine Action hunger strikers are being treated in the UK, and the crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism in US schools and universities to grasp what Roy means about the ‘charade of Western liberal democracy.’ In Amahl Bishara’s words, “it is clear that Palestine has become a hub of global liberation politics today. Palestine links people and issues in ways that would have been surprising a few years ago.”
A public love fest at Mar-a-Lago
The ‘charade’ not just of liberal democracy, but of Trump’s ‘peace plan’ was on full display when Prime Minister Netanyahu on Dec. 29 had his fifth meeting in the US this year with President Trump. In public at least there was little sign of what The Washington Post on Dec. 28 had called their “increasingly diverging views on practically every Middle East hot spot.”
With Netanyahu by his side Trump asserted that he was “not concerned about anything that Israel is doing” even as the number of Israel’s ‘ceasefire’ violations approached 1,000, leaving 418 Palestinians dead and more than 1,100 wounded. While Israel maintains it has only killed militants who were violating the ceasefire, at least 157 children are among the dead, including three and four-year olds. Trump declared that Israel “has lived up to the plan, 100%,” overlooking the rebuke he had given Netanyahu for an airstrike on Dec. 13 that killed senior Hamas commander Raed Saad and three other people. Three days later Israel carried out multiple airstrikes and artillery shelling in several parts of Gaza City and Deir al-Balah without, as far as we know, triggering Trump’s disapproval.
Trump endorsed what he called a ‘voluntary’ displacement of Palestinians from Gaza but refused to discuss the withdrawal of Israeli troops. He repeatedly demanded that Hamas disarm, stating that “there’ll be hell to pay” if they don’t. Days before the US conducted a massive assault on Venezuela (which “we’re going to run”) and on international law, he gave Israel the green light to again bomb Iran, adding that “we’ll knock the hell out of them” if Iran is trying to rebuild its nuclear program. A few days later he declared that the US was “locked and loaded” if Iran continued to attack protestors.
Netanyahu had his own present for Trump: he told him that the Israel Prize, Israel’s highest civilian honor that had never previously been given to a non-Israeli, would be bestowed on him in 2026.
Off stage: preparing for war and ethnic cleansing
Three days before Netanyahu and Trump met, Israel – invoking the spirit of the Abraham Accords – announced its official recognition of the Republic of Somaliland as a sovereign state. It is the first country to recognize the breakaway Muslim territory which had declared its independence from Somalia in 1991. Some 21 countries and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation signed Somalia’s statement condemning Israel’s recognition of Somaliland as an “unprecedented step” and a violation of international law.
Somaliland is strategically located on the Gulf of Aden across from Yemen, home of the Houthis, which is one of the six countries Israel attacked in 2025. The US has attacked Yemen nearly 400 times since 2002, and The Heritage Foundation (which authored Project 2025 that guides Trump’s policies) has long recommended that the US recognize Somaliland.
As well as offering Israel (and the US) military opportunities, Somaliland on Dec. 20 reportedly promised to resettle up to one and a half million displaced Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The potential mass transfer of Gaza’s residents to Somaliland or war-torn Somalia and Sudan had been pursued by Israel and the US for several months. On Jan. 1, 2026 the Somaliland government denied allegations that it would accept displaced Palestinians or permit new Israeli military bases to be established on its territory.
Intensifying the pressure on the population
On Dec. 30, a day after Netanyahu and Trump met, Israel released a list of 37 international NGOs which as of March 1, 2026 would no longer be allowed to work in the Gaza Strip – see the list here. It claims their deregistration is a necessary security measure to prevent “the exploitation of humanitarian frameworks for terrorist purposes” and asserted without offering proof that Doctors without Borders (MSF) had two staff members with links to militant groups. According to The Times of Israel, organizations could be deregistered for a number of reasons, including for not submitting personal information about their workers and for supporting “delegitimization” campaigns such as BDS. Twenty-four organizations have been registered to work in Gaza, most of them American and Christian organizations. That list is here.
The banning of major NGOs has been widely denounced, with foreign ministers of ten nations condemning it as “catastrophic” and more than 50 international NGOs saying it would gravely impede delivering humanitarian aid. Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, approved of the ban.
According to the Palestinian group Badil, Israel’s action against the NGOs is part of the ‘Decisive Plan’ developed by Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party, which is a “blueprint for colonial expansion and Palestinian subjugation.” The banning of NGO’s coincides with new legislation against the already restricted group UNRWA which abolished its diplomatic immunity, denied it water, electricity and fuel and empowered the government to seize its property. Remarkably, UNRWA is still at work in Gaza, as the executive director of UNRWA-USA explains here.
Netanyahu joins Trump in battle for ‘western civilization’
As Israel began to build a new settlement on lands seized from the majority-Christian town of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, Netanyahu took a cue from Trump’s Christmas Day bombing of Nigeria in the name of protecting Christians. With Christian Zionists in the US a major source of support for both leaders, the Israeli prime minister announced on Dec. 31 that Israel would be engaging with the US in a global battle for “the future of Western civilization” against the spreading influence of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. Brushing aside the fact that in the West Bank, the Christian population has shrunk to 1% under the Israeli occupation, he asserted that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that “protects the Christian community, enables it to grow, defends it, and makes sure it thrives.”
With Iran and Hezbollah looming large in Israel’s war playbook at a time when the US public and even Republican voters are turning against unconditional arms shipments to Israel, Netanyahu must have been relieved with the Pentagon’s announcement following his meeting with Trump that it gave Boeing $8.6 billion to manufacture 25 F-15IA warplanes for Israel. When the prime minister returned from his six-day visit to the US, a member of his delegation said that “everything went better than we expected.”
The West Bank: accelerating de facto annexation
The one area where Trump hinted at disagreement with Netanyahu concerned Israel’s West Bank policies which have destroyed the territory’s economy, turned it into a powder keg and been denounced by Arab and Muslim nations. A week before Netanyahu traveled to the US, Israel ‘legalized’ 19 more ‘outposts’ so they could be made ‘legal’ settlements. According to Finance Minister Smotrich, over the past three years Israel has approved 69 outposts in its drive “to develop, build and settle the inherited land of our ancestors.”
Fourteen countries immediately condemned the latest legalization. But Israel has showed no sign of being deterred by international rhetoric opposing its plan to establish sovereignty over the West Bank. To further fragment the territory and prevent the formation of a Palestinian state, it is planning to build 9,000 strategically-placed new housing units in East Jerusalem in addition to the 28,000 already approved for the West Bank in 2025. Israel has prevented tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes in partly destroyed refugee camps and continuing to demolish refugee homes. It is now using often deadly violence and relentless harassment to expel Palestinians from their homes in the 22% of the West Bank known as Area B, that the Oslo process had put under the administrative control of the PA.
The end of the olive harvest has not diminished the daily brutality inflicted on Palestinians throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while the ‘protective presence’ mounted by Israeli and international volunteers has slowed but not ended the Israeli effort to empty the Jordan Valley of Palestinians. Soldiers continue to shoot and kill teenagers they say are throwing stones, which is official army policy. Over 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and more than 9,000 wounded since Oct. 2023 as the US ensures that Israel has the equipment needed to repress the population. On Dec. 23, Haaretz reported that the Defense Department was providing Israel with American-made Colt rifles worth $13 million.
The Gaza Strip: the nightmare is unending
With more than 239,000 Palestinians killed and wounded since Oct. 2023, the majority of them women and children, the numbers continue to rise, while only 74 intensive care beds remain in Gaza’s wrecked health care sector. Israel has no hesitation in firing over the ‘ceasefire’s yellow line’ which its army expands west at will into Gaza’s heavily populated areas, even as it systematically destroys all the structures within the more than half of Gaza it controls and builds roads linking Gaza to Israel.
On Dec. 19, the army attacked a school where displaced people had taken shelter in Gaza City, killing six of them including a baby. As frigid winter storms continue to flood tents which are of poor quality, more children have died of cold. Miscarriages have surged, with births reportedly declining by 40% over last year’s numbers. Gaza’s residents are meanwhile being sickened by towering piles of 900,000 tons of solid waste, as Israel refuses to allow the entry of a sufficient number of trucks to remove waste and material to repair sewage facilities.
While it bars humanitarian shipments containing ‘dual-use’ items such as tent poles, solar panels, crutches, wheelchairs, sterilization equipment and oxygen generators “which can be repurposed for terrorist activities” as well as the entry of items that “don’t address urgent humanitarian needs” such as pens, pencils, frozen beef and many other food items, it gives a green light to commercial shipments of many of these products which most residents cannot afford to purchase. The huge profit made by a network of businesses involved in the Gaza trade is described here.
A bleak future
With Israel rejecting Hamas’ offer to ‘store’ its weapons or hand them over to a Palestinian-run entity, with Netanyahu refusing to allow the PA to operate in Gaza and seeking to prolong the war that has already cost $110 billion, with Trump’s Board of Peace and International Stabilization Force still unformed as countries refuse to shoulder the burden of disarming Hamas, and with Republican insiders and US companies maneuvering for lucrative contracts, among them the company that helps run the infamous immigrant detention center in south Florida known as ‘Alligator Alcatraz’, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip face a grim future in which mass expulsion is Israel’s goal.
According to The Wall Street Journal for Dec. 19, a ‘Project Sunrise’ Kushner-Witkoff scheme to rebuild Gaza as a luxurious ‘smart city’ high tech zone at a projected cost of $112 billion is making the rounds, with the US pledging $60 billion in grants and debt guarantees. So it seems that Trump’s plan for a ‘Riviera of the Middle East ’ is still on the cards. Under this latest version of monetizing catastrophe, there is no mention of Palestinians having any role to play and no consideration of whether they could afford to live in the glitzy administrative hub of New Rafah, with a projected population of 500,000.
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in PalestinePlease go here to read previous briefs.
Palestine 2025: Human and demographic bleeding and a mass collapse in health, education and the economy
Wednesday 31 December 2025 - Time: 10:30
Echo News - The Central Bureau of Statistics, on Wednesday, gave a comprehensive briefing on the situation of the Palestinians at the end of 2025, on New Year's Eve 2026, pointing out that statistical indicators reflect a real humanitarian and demographic disaster, with long-term effects on population stability, development and human rights.
Unprecedented human losses since October 7, 2023
According to the data of the Ministry of Health, the number of martyrs in Palestine has reached more than 72,000 martyrs since the start of the Israeli aggression on October 7, 2023, 98% of them in the Gaza Strip, thus recording the highest toll of martyrs in the history of the Israeli occupation's aggression against our people.
By the end of December 2025, the number of martyrs in the Gaza Strip reached 70,942 martyrs, including 18,592 children and about 12,400 women, while about 11,000 people are still missing, and the number of wounded rose to 171,195. Since the beginning of the aggression, about 100,000 Palestinians have been forced to leave the Strip, and about two million citizens have been displaced from their homes out of about 2.2 million citizens who were residing in the Strip before the aggression, yet they were not spared from the bombing.
In the West Bank, the escalating occupation aggression and settler terrorism resulted in the martyrdom of 1,102 people and the injury of 9,034 others.
The population of the Gaza Strip decreased by 10.6% in two years
These human losses and forced displacement movements directly reflected the size of the population, as population estimates indicate that the population of the State of Palestine reached about 5.56 million people at the end of 2025, with 3.43 million in the West Bank.
On the other hand, the Gaza Strip witnessed a sharp and unprecedented decline in the population of about 254,000 people, equivalent to a decrease of 10.6% compared to the population estimates before the aggression. Gaza's population is currently 2.13 million, reflecting what the Central Bureau of Statistics described as severe demographic bleeding caused by killing, displacement and deteriorating living conditions.
15.5 million Palestinians worldwide
By the end of 2025, the estimated number of Palestinians in the world reached about 15.49 million, of whom 5.56 million reside in the State of Palestine, while 1.86 million people live in the 1948 territories. Estimates also show that the number of Palestinians in the diaspora reached about 8.82 million people, 6.82 million of whom are concentrated in the Arab countries, while the rest are distributed in other countries around the world, reflecting the widening of the population dispersion as a result of coercive political and historical factors.
A young society despite demographic bleeding
Palestinian society remains a young society despite the great human losses, as population estimates at the end of 2025 indicated that Palestinian society is characterized by a young age composition, as children in the age group (0–4 years) constituted about 13% of the total population in the State of Palestine, 12% in the West Bank, and 14% in the Gaza Strip.
The percentage of the population under the age of 15 was about 36% of the total population (35% in the West Bank, compared to 39% in the Gaza Strip), while individuals under the age of 30 accounted for about 64% of the population. On the other hand, the percentage of the elderly (65 years and over) did not exceed 4% of the total population, which confirms the continued youth character of Palestinian society and the high percentage of its dependents.
Almost complete destruction of the health system in the Gaza Strip
The occupation's aggression on the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023 has led to an almost complete collapse in the health care system. According to World Health Organization data, about 94% of health care facilities and hospitals in the Strip have been damaged or destroyed, and only 19 out of 36 partially operational hospitals with very limited operating cards remain, in light of a severe shortage of medicines and medical supplies, the depletion of health cadres, and frequent interruption of fuel needed to operate generators.
The number of beds currently available in Gaza Strip hospitals is only about 2,000 beds, to serve a population of more than two million people, which is very low and does not meet the minimum health needs, especially in light of the significant rise in the number of wounded and sick. It is estimated that 40 beds are threatened with immediate loss of their presence in hospitals located within the declared evacuation areas, in addition to the possibility of losing an additional 850 beds if the security situation around health facilities continues to deteriorate.
Critical health and nutritional conditions for women and children
Ministry of Health data reveal very serious humanitarian repercussions. About 60,000 pregnant women in the Gaza Strip are exposed to serious health risks as a result of the lack or limited health care services, and about 155,000 pregnant and nursing women face severe difficulties in accessing prenatal and post-natal health care services.
More than 70% of Gaza's population depends on contaminated or unsafe drinking water, and by July 2025, 95% of families had not had access to safe drinking water. The data indicate that 96% of families suffer from water insecurity, and 90% of them report a sharp deterioration in water quality, which contributes to the spread of large-scale intestinal diseases, especially among children.
Collapse of the right to education
The education sector has suffered unprecedented destruction, especially in the Gaza Strip. In early December 2025, more than 179 government schools were completely destroyed, while 218 schools were bombed or vandalized, including 118 government schools and 100 UNRWA schools.
In the West Bank, schools faced frequent raids and demolition orders, including the demolition of the Khala Amira Basic School in the Yatta district on 01/12/2025.
At the higher education level, 63 university buildings in the Gaza Strip were completely destroyed, while eight universities in the West Bank were subjected to repeated raids and vandalism.
The statistics agency pointed out that the human losses in the education sector are terrible, as 18,979 students were martyred, including 18,863 in the Gaza Strip, in addition to the martyrdom of 1,399 university students, in addition to 797 teachers and administrators and 241 employees in the higher education sector, reflecting a direct targeting of the education sector.
Economic collapse and record unemployment
Economic indicators for 2025 reveal an unprecedented collapse of the Palestinian economy. The GDP of the Gaza Strip shrunk by 84% compared to 2023, reflecting almost complete economic paralysis. In the West Bank, GDP fell by 13%, despite a slight growth of 4.4% compared to 2024.
Gaza's economy continued to shrink in 2025, recording a further decline of 8.7%. Unemployment reached catastrophic levels, with unemployment reaching 46% of the Palestinian labor force (28% in the West Bank and 78% in the Gaza Strip), which is one of the highest rates in the world, and the number of unemployed rose to about 650,000 people, which confirms the depth of the economic and social crisis.