Occupied Palestinian Territory Humanitarian Fund

The Occupied Palestinian Territory Humanitarian Fund (OPT HF), established in 2007, is a rapid and flexible funding mechanism that supports national and international NGOs and UN agencies in responding to the most pressing emergencies. Under the leadership of the Humanitarian Coordinator (HC) for the OPT, the fund supports the timely allocation and disbursement of donor resources to the most critical humanitarian needs defined in the Humanitarian Response Plans/Flash Appeals.

A protracted protection crisis continues in the OPT, which remains largely attributable to Israel’s ongoing military occupation, now in its 56th year, 18 years of the Gaza blockade, the internal Palestinian divide, lack of adherence to international humanitarian and human rights law and recurrent escalations of hostilities between Israeli security forces and Palestinian armed groups. 

The current round of hostilities, which started in October 2023, has resulted in further civilian casualties, displacement and destruction of homes and other civilian infrastructure, as well as hundreds of Israeli casualties and hostages. Ninety per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.1 million people has been displaced, lacking access to essential services such as shelter, food, medical care, clean water, education, and livelihoods. In the West Bank, the humanitarian situation has further exacerbated since October 2023, resulting in Palestinian casualties and displacement. This is marked in the intensification of Israeli forces and settler violence, restrictive and discriminatory planning regime, destruction of Palestinian-owned structures, and other occupation-related laws, policies and practices, which have generated a coercive environment in various areas, which creates pressure on residents to leave their communities and places them at risk of forcible transfer.

The Fund is operationally managed by OCHA’s Humanitarian Financing Unit based in the OPT, which ensures that the OPT HF is managed from the epicenter of the crisis, with allocation processes and monitoring close to partners and projects on the ground. The fund strives to improve the relevance and coherence of humanitarian response by strategically funding priorities identified under the Humanitarian Response Plans/Flash Appeal and expanding the delivery of assistance in hard-to-reach areas by partnering with national and international NGOs.

Like all Country-Based Pooled Funds, the OPT HF is designed to complement other humanitarian funding sources, such as bilateral funding and the Central Emergency Response Fund.