Food Security Bulletin No. 13, Winter 2015
The Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) is pleased to publish the thirteenth edition of the semiannual Food Security Bulletin, which is the second issue for the year 2015. In 2015 the Palestinian economy continued to struggle to recover from the destruction caused by the Israeli war on Gaza in the summer of last year and its widespread effects on society, the economy, and infrastructure. In this light, the Food Security Sector (FSS) released the long awaited figures on food security and food insecurity in Palestine in 2014. The process took longer than usual because of changes in the methodology to better fit the specific Palestinian context by adding a measure of resilience. As expected, food insecurity remained a serious challenge, especially in Gaza. Overall, 28.6% of Palestinian households were either severely or marginally food insecure last year, which means that 1.6 million Palestinians did not have proper access to food. The proportion was as high as 46.7% in Gaza, compared to 16.3% in the West Bank. What is of high importance is the fact that the wide gap between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip did not only persist but actually increased between 2013 and 2014. While food insecurity in the West Bank improved from 22.1% in 2013 to 16.3% in 2014, it worsened in Gaza from 44.5% in 2013 to 46.7% in 2014. Regrettably, the FSS has not provided yet a detailed analysis of the factors behind these changes, which will follow sometime early next year. Although data on food insecurity in 2015 will not be available for several months, the prospects are rather bleak as food prices in Palestine rose significantly – by 6.2% – over the course of a year, between October 2014 and October 2015 (latest available data)