Disaster Response Palestine Project #61595

Emergency Relief in Palestine

by Anera

Project Report | Mar 17, 2026
March 2026 Update on Emergency Relief in Gaza

By Erin Zehr | Digital Fundraising Specialist

Hot meals are served 6 days a week to 7,500 people

Anera is closely monitoring the escalating crisis across the Middle East, which has already caused deaths, displacement, movement restrictions and heightened public concern. Military activity and closures are affecting daily life for civilians and humanitarian workers alike. Anera is taking active steps to protect staff and adapt operations to sustain essential services for communities in need.

Our Gaza operations remain stable with our staff and volunteers in Gaza still able to work. All crossings permitting aid into Gaza closed for several days and now there are partial reopenngs. Overall, interruptions to the flow of aid will deepen existing shortages.

Families who were already experiencing a lack of resources, hunger and displacement will struggle even more in light of the newest crisis in the Middle East. The escalation over the past several weeks does not mean a pause in our work. In fact, it means that vulnerable families across Gaza need humanitarian assistance even more than before.

Currently, our team is focused on distribution of food for Ramadan. Even as our teams are now actively meeting new urgent needs, our Ramadan programming has not stopped. Where possible, our staff are delivering food aid directly, and when travel is restricted our teams are coordinating remotely and working through trusted local partners to ensure there is no interruption to families receiving nourishing, balanced meals.

Despite challenges, our team is Gaza is doing great work. To illustrate our work in Gaza, here is a snapshot of recent efforts between Februrary 28th through March 5th.

The Anera Gaza team continued delivering large-scale food assistance to displaced families across the south and central areas of Gaza. In Khan Younis and the middle area, the team prepared and distributed 300 pots of hot meals, serving approximately 7,500 displaced people daily, six days per week. Across community shelters, an additional 17,151 hot meals were distributed over a two-day period, along with 246 fresh produce parcels 4,534 ready-to-eat meals and bags of wheat flour and 1,135 boxes of high-energy biscuits.

A livelihood initiative led by a team of seven women and a chef also launched a pastries and bread project, producing and distributing 400 meals.

The team worked to expand access to safe water and sanitation in shelters and displacement sites. Anera delivered 70,534 gallons of potable water to community shelters in Gaza City and Khan Younis. To improve sanitation conditions, the team installed 10 latrines, conducted 13 health and hygiene awareness sessions reaching 294 participants, and installed five steel water tanks serving camps in southern Gaza. A waste management team of 56 day workers collected 52.19 tons of solid waste from seven camps, carried out sterilization campaigns to reduce insect-related health risks, and filled in nine hazardous sewage pits.

Anera’s health teams continued providing essential medical care through six clinics across Gaza, reaching 6,137 patients during the week. Primary healthcare services at clinics in Khan Younis, Deir Al Balah and Nuseirat treated 3,357 patients, while 2,780 patients received maternal, pediatric, psychosocial support, and nutrition services at mother-and-child health clinics in Gaza City, Khan Younis and Al-Zawaida.

The Gaza team also distributed children’s clothing kits to 584 vulnerable families, while 2,000 children received ‘joy kits’ filled with treats across six locations in southern Gaza and two in the north.

Education programming continued in shelters, with 956 students registered and attending learning activities. Psychosocial support programs reached more than 350 children and 57 parents through recreational activities, counseling sessions and positive parenting workshops, helping families cope with the ongoing crisis.

Continuing onwards amidst compounding crises and extreme uncertainty is not easy. Yet, time and time again our team in Gaza has demonstrated that even in the face of dire challenges, we cannot give up on families in need. We must continue to focus on the very tangible impact that we can create for families, on what we can accomplish together. Thank you for your support which makes this work possible.

Water distribution

Education programs continue in shelters

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Nov 14, 2025
November 2025 Update on Emergency Relief in Gaza

By Erin Zehr | Digital Fundraising Specialist

Distribution of hygiene kits

The two-year war on Gaza, the deadliest Palestinians have endured, is now in a state of fragile peace. The vast majority of the population has been displaced many times, 83% of structures are damaged in Gaza City alone, and the size of the territory where Palestinians can inhabit has shrunk by half. With the ceasefire agreement, more aid is now entering the territory and people are returning to their homes, which mostly lie in piles of rubble. Essential services like sanitation, power, and water are destroyed or inoperable. Hospitals are severely over-burdened and lack basic supplies or medicines. But the people of Gaza are eager to rebuild their lives and Anera stands alongside them.

With the war’s end, the real work begins. Anera’s core staff of 19 professionals in Gaza, along with a team of hundreds of humanitarian responders on the ground, have been responding in Gaza throughout the war, distributing essential relief supplies, healthcare services, psychosocial relief, learning spaces, and more. We are as committed as ever to continuing to deliver relief while rebuilding for the long term.

To date, as part of Anera’s Palestine Emergency Response, our team in Gaza has delivered 135 million meal servings (including hot meals, food parcels, and fresh produce parcels), 11 million gallons of water, 76,853 hygiene kits, 53,194 blankets, 7,127 tents and 8,404 mattresses. Our health team in Gaza has been operating numerous clinics, embedded among displaced families, that provide a range of services, including wound management, pediatrics, orthopedics, gynecology and more. Overall, our teams have provided dignified and professional care to nearly 400,000 patients.

Our team has also been working to support the needs of children and youth. Our temporary learning spaces provide a refuge and supportive environment where children can begin learning again, after war disrupted their education. In the last few weeks, along with several partners, Anera has begun training community members to become mentors for children ages 9 to 15. These mentors learn how to lead group activities, creative exercises, and supportive conversations that help children rebuild self esteem. Our teams are monitoring the process closely to understand what is most effective. By equipping trusted adults with these skills, we can reach more children and provide consistent, community-based support. Since October 2023, Anera has reached more than 43,000 children with psychosocial sessions in partnership with local psychological and social counseling organizations.

Anera will continue to deliver urgently needed emergency aid and will expand our programs to focus on long-term rebuilding and hope. Our clinics will keep treating patients as we restore Gaza’s health infrastructure. Our education and psychosocial programs will help young people heal and learn, as we rebuild schools. Our food assistance will provide meals while we repair local food systems. Our engineers will revive water and sanitation networks, restoring health and dignity. The needs are vast, but so is our resolve. Anera stands with Gaza, and we are grateful you do, too.

Your ongoing support is essential to ensure that we can continue to navigate challenges to provide life-saving relief to families and build towards recovery. Thank you for all you have done and will continue to do to make this work possible.

A patient at one of Anera's Mother & Child Clinics

A child receives a fresh produce parcel

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Jul 18, 2025
July 2025 Update on Emergency Relief in Palestine

By Erin Zehr | Digital Fundraising Specialist

A young child at a hot meal distribution

Anera remains committed to providing humanitarian aid with dignity, transparency, and safety despite imposed challenges and restrictions.

On March 2, 2025, Israel began a complete blockade on all aid and supplies from entering Gaza, which lasted for over 80 days. In late May, limited aid was allowed to enter Gaza through a controversial and harmful new aid distribution model, which has resulted in hundreds of people being killed and thousands injured (read our statement). Experienced humanitarian actors, including Anera, are ready to deliver life-saving assistance at scale, yet there remains a near-total blockade on aid and commercial goods. After more than 130 days of these restrictions, Gaza’s humanitarian conditions are collapsing faster than at any point in the past 21 months. The entire 2.1 million population of Gaza is facing prolonged food shortages, with nearly half a million people in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, and illness.

Despite the enormous challenges, our team still finds a way to provide relief. Since October 2023, Anera has distributed 66 million meals, over 3 million gallons of drinking water, and facilitated over 1,800 health clinic sessions. None of this would have been possible without the generous support of donors like you.

On June 25, Anera, in coordination with other partners, facilitated the entry of ten aid trucks into northern Gaza. This marked the first food Anera has delivered into Gaza in nearly three months. This aid was delivered to our partners, who distributed it directly to Gazans who are in critical need of food and supplies. We continue our efforts to advocate for more aid to be allowed into the region.

We also acquired and distributed a limited quantity of fresh produce grown in Gaza and continue to operate programs to deliver hot meals and pastries at a limited capacity. In addition to providing meals, our staff is also providing clean water to displaced people in need every day.

A main hallmark of our recent aid efforts in Gaza have been our field healthcare centers which provide both primary care and specialty care, including gynecology and obstetrics, orthopedics, wound management, dermatology, nutrition and much more. These clinics provide medical care to thousands of patients each week. From July 12 to July 14 alone, 3,612 patients received treatment across the three healthcare centers in Gaza City, Khan Younis and Deir Al Balah. Our staff in Gaza have diligently thought through every element of these clinics to provide patients with as much dignity and professionalism in their care as possible. This includes using shipping pallets to build chairs to furnish a waiting room so patients can rest while they await care, creating multiple exam rooms using tarps to maximize privacy, and using laptops charged with solar panels so doctors can keep patient records in an organized and confidential manner. These health clinics have become a last resort for many families as Gaza’s health sector is almost entirely destroyed.

Ongoing support is essential to ensure that we can continue to navigate extreme challenges to provide life-saving relief to families. Thank you for all you have done and will continue to do to make this work possible.

A girl receives medical care at an Anera clinic

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