The family of Dina, a woman in her twenties from Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, received no assistance from the beginning of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip until early 2026.

As reports spread that aid organizations were moving toward cash assistance as an alternative to in-kind aid, the family went through an exhausting week-long process to file a complaint with the World Food Program (WFP).

Shortly afterward, the family received three cash assistance payments over four months, from January to April 2026, from three international organizations: WFP, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and Save the Children. They also began receiving monthly food assistance.

The relief Dina’s family felt at this breakthrough was not shared by Mohammed, a man in his forties from the town of Al-Qarara, north of Khan Younis. Displaced with his family of five, he is staying at a shelter inside a clinic run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), west of the city. His family received cash assistance only once.

Despite this, Mohammed did not try to contact any local or international organization to follow up or file a complaint. He said he had little faith in the complaints system, and knew of people who received assistance repeatedly. In contrast, others received nothing despite being eligible and believed that the amount of assistance would cover their family’s needs for no more than three days. Instead, he chose to focus his energy on managing the demands of daily life.

Who Receives Assistance?

The experiences of Dina’s and Mohammed’s families are not far removed from the findings of a structured online survey conducted by the author of this investigation to examine people’s experiences and perceptions of cash assistance in the Gaza Strip since October 2023.

A sample of 360 people responded to the survey, 36.4% of whom were women and 63.6% men.

After displacement, the sample was concentrated in Gaza City, Khan Younis, and the central governorate. However, based on respondents’ places of residence before displacement, it covered all governorates: 35% were from Gaza, 23.6% from the central governorate, 18.9% from Khan Younis, 13.9% from Rafah, and 8.6% from northern Gaza, reflecting the sample’s geographic diversity.

The responses showed that 64.2% of households had children, 39.4% included people with illnesses, 26.4% included older adults, 21.9% were women-headed, and 20.3% included people with disabilities.

The survey also found that 44.4% of respondents had not received any cash assistance; among the 55.6% who had, most reported receiving it between one and three times. This means that some people received assistance repeatedly while others received none at all, despite the exceptional circumstances facing Gaza’s population.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, unemployment in the Gaza Strip had risen to 68% by April 2026. In July of the same year, the World Food Program (WFP) reported that 67% of the population was facing critical or worse levels of acute food insecurity.

Among those who said they had never received cash assistance, not even once, is Samira, a widowed woman in her seventies who suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes, and breast cancer, and who lost her home in central Khan Younis.

Now living in a tent, Samira leaned on her son’s arm as she made her way to the nearest agent to activate her digital wallet. Her neighbor helped her register through every available online link. She then waited for months, checking her wallet dozens of times, but “to no avail.” She does not know how to file a complaint.

Why Don’t Beneficiaries File Complaints?

Those who were more fortunate, as Dina was, and said they knew how to file a complaint represented just 28.3% of survey respondents, while 71.7% said they did not know how to do so.

Nevertheless, 47.2% said they had previously filed a complaint, compared with 52.8% who had not. Among those who complained, 58.3% said they received no response at all, while 27.9% described the response they received as poor.

The reasons given by those who had not filed a complaint varied. Some 47.6% said they did not believe it would change anything, while 19.6% said they did not know which body was responsible for receiving complaints, and 13.3% did not know how to submit one.

Another 14.7% expressed concern that filing a complaint could affect their chances of receiving assistance. This is consistent with the findings of the 2025 annual survey by the Coalition for Integrity and Accountability (AMAN), in which 32% of respondents cited not knowing which body was authorized to receive corruption complaints as one reason people refrain from reporting corruption.

Are Communication Channels Effective?

The survey results also showed that international organizations, including UN agencies, were the main source of cash assistance. Some 89% of recipients said they had received it from international organizations, compared with 5.5% who received it from a local organization, while 8% did not know which organization had assisted.

Many of these organizations operate through the Palestine Cash Working Group (CWG), a platform for coordination and planning. Data published online by the group indicate that cash assistance has become one of the main pillars of the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip.

Yet one of the most significant problems highlighted by the survey concerns access to information. Some 41.5% of respondents said they did not know how to register for cash assistance, another 41.5% said they knew how but found the process difficult, and only 17% said they knew how to register. Similarly, 67.8% said they did not know the criteria used to select beneficiaries, 23.9% knew only some of the criteria, and just 8.3% knew all of them. These findings raise questions about transparency and the effectiveness of communication channels between aid organizations and Gaza’s population.

According to Humanitarian Response Report No. 69, issued by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on February 27, 2026, more than 165,000 households had received at least one cash payment during 2026. In 2025, according to Report No. 60, issued in January 2026, more than 340,000 households received at least one payment.

According to the latest reports, each household receives 1,250 shekels through digital payment mechanisms. The amount is based on the agreed transfer value under the Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB), a tool used by humanitarian organizations to estimate the cost of a household’s most basic needs and determine the level of assistance required to prevent extreme deprivation.

However, 70.5% of respondents said this amount was insufficient to meet their households’ basic needs, while 29.5% considered it adequate. Compounding these concerns, 78.9% said they knew people who had received cash assistance despite being less in need than others who received nothing. This points to a widespread perception that both the value of the assistance and access to it are not necessarily tied to beneficiaries’ actual level of need.

This perception is also consistent with the findings of the previously mentioned AMAN survey, in which 35% of respondents believed humanitarian aid was the sector most vulnerable to corruption in the Gaza Strip.

What Are Local Organizations Missing?

To learn more about the CWG, including the criteria it follows, how its databases are updated, its complaints mechanisms, and other issues, the author of this investigation attempted to contact the group’s coordinator, Ahmed Abu Shamala, by phone and email between July 9 and July 16, 2026.

He responded by email, suggesting that she contact Alessia Volpe, the CWG’s manager. The author subsequently emailed Volpe on July 17 requesting information and followed up on July 21. As of the publication of this article, she had not responded to any of the questions.

For her part, Etemad Wishah, psychosocial support coordinator at the Women’s Affairs Center in Gaza, warned that “local organizations are not part of a system that checks whether residents are receiving assistance multiple times.”

She added: “In emergencies, anything is possible. The growing shift toward cash assistance at the expense of in-kind aid, as happened when WFP announced the move through its Facebook platform in April 2026, raises concerns, particularly under the blockade and given the presence of vulnerable groups who do not have control over decision-making.”

Wishah also explained that the cash assistance women receive through the center, as is the case with Palestinian organizations working in the protection sector, is provided through case-management programs for cases involving vulnerability and gender-based violence. Beneficiaries who use the center’s safe spaces undergo a professional assessment, and having an electronic wallet is a prerequisite.

Cash assistance is then provided through several systems, either directly by the center or by its donors.

Who Protects Beneficiaries on the Ground?

The management of Wishah Telecommunications, an agent of PalPay, an electronic payment and collection company, in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, describes “forms of exploitation that residents have fallen victim to since cash assistance began to be distributed.”

“Under our agreement with PalPay, we receive 2% of the assistance amount in return for operational services. Yet we have seen thousands of people paying money simply to have the wallet application activated on their mobile phones,” said a company official who preferred to speak on behalf of the company rather than be named.

“Since cash assistance began in 2023, most people have lacked the knowledge needed to manage the entire process, whether activating a wallet, using it, knowing where to find agents, or dealing with other aspects of the system,” he added.

In his view, the situation was made worse by residents turning to cash traders to obtain physical currency. In a humanitarian situation report published on June 21, 2025, OCHA said this practice “restricts people’s access to markets and reduces their purchasing power.”

As for the later shift by many organizations toward transferring assistance directly to beneficiaries, the official said this “does not take their best interests into account.” He explained that agents can help ensure that assistance reaches the intended beneficiary, particularly in the absence of field verification that might reveal that a beneficiary has died, left the country, or that their digital wallet has been activated on someone else’s phone, all situations his staff has encountered.

He also pointed to the problems caused by damaged or lost phones, restrictions on bringing new devices into Gaza, and obstacles to creating digital wallets for many people whose national identity documents were issued after October 2023.

“We end up disbursing assistance through another person’s wallet, despite the risks this poses to the beneficiary’s rights,” he said.

Beneficiary protection through a code of conduct shared by aid organizations with payment companies and their agents has not been part of the system, according to Wishah Telecommunications. “The instructions agents receive come only from the company, through WhatsApp or by direct phone call when necessary,” the company said.

Why Have Exploitation and Extortion Increased?

The shift toward cash assistance has also exposed other shortcomings related to the protection of beneficiaries’ data. One of the most significant was disclosed by WFP on May 31, 2026, when it announced that “the self-registration application used to register people for assistance in Gaza had experienced a security incident that resulted in data belonging to 600,000 households being accessed by unauthorized parties,” according to its statement.

As of the writing of this article, WFP had not announced the findings of its investigation into the incident. It did, however, urge beneficiaries not to share personal information with unknown individuals or entities, not to click on suspicious links or messages, and to exercise caution with anyone claiming to represent WFP while requesting information or money.

For Tarek, a man in his forties, this advice came far too late, two years and eight months into the war. In mid-2025, he fell victim to fraud after clicking a link and sharing his digital wallet information with someone who claimed to represent PayPal.

The incident resulted in the theft of cash assistance intended for Tarek’s family, who had been displaced from Al-Mughraqa village to the Nuseirat refugee camp. The experience left him deeply wary: once bitten, twice shy. He no longer trusts links, registers for assistance, or sees any point in filing a complaint.

Yet 81.4% of survey respondents said they had previously registered for cash assistance through an online link, even though only 28.1% expressed confidence that the organizations responsible for distributing aid adequately protect the privacy of the personal data submitted during registration.

Tarek is far from alone. “There are many people like him across the Gaza Strip, particularly as cases of extortion and exploitation have increased during the war because of families’ vulnerability, their search for any way out of the crisis, and limited awareness of how to use electronic payment systems,” said Suhail Al-Tanani, a protection consultant at Fares Al-Arab Association in Gaza.

Al-Tanani raised a series of questions: “Why don’t people know the criteria governing who receives assistance? Why don’t they know how often it is distributed? Why don’t they know who decides who receives it, who oversees the process, how beneficiary databases are built, or how complaints are handled?”

He also warned of the risks of failing to prioritize the most vulnerable groups, including people with disabilities, women who are the primary providers for their families, unmarried women, families with children, and people who lack access to the necessary technology.

Al-Tanani pointed to UNRWA’s pre-war aid system as an example of what people had been accustomed to: assistance was distributed according to clear, widely known schedules and eligibility criteria, while regular field assessments of families’ circumstances helped strengthen trust in the system.

“It is the responsibility of organizations to uphold the values of transparency, integrity, and fairness, and to make people aware of their rights and how to access them,” he said. “It is also the responsibility of networks of civil society organizations to hold them accountable for fulfilling that role.”

Could the System Be Better?

Aziza Al-Kahlout, spokesperson for Gaza’s Ministry of Social Development, also criticized international aid programs, citing several shortcomings: a lack of clarity over how assistance amounts are calculated; insufficient information about why applications are accepted or rejected; inconsistent understanding of how data updates affect eligibility; slow complaint-handling procedures and difficulty accessing complaint channels; limited follow-up and poor communication of outcomes to applicants; insufficient transparency in explaining decisions following the review of complaints; and the absence of clear appeal mechanisms.

By contrast, Al-Kahlout explained that the ministry uses a set of criteria when providing cash assistance. These include a household’s income level and sources of income, the number and composition of household members, the employment status of those able to work, housing and property conditions, and the findings of social assessments conducted by social workers.

“We cooperate with the Ministry of Social Development in Ramallah on some programs, and we currently coordinate and work jointly with several international and local organizations involved in the relief sector,” Al-Kahlout said. “But the war has severely constrained relief efforts, leading some organizations to scale back both aid provision and coordination.”

Her comments are consistent with a warning issued by WFP on July 24, 2026. The organization’s Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response said that WFP would be forced to make broader cuts to its assistance in the Gaza Strip unless it received urgent additional funding.

This year, the Ministry of Social Development also launched a campaign to raise awareness about the risks of online fraud. Al-Kahlout said the campaign was “a response to genuine risks. When organizations lack transparency, and people are in desperate need, the risks of extortion and exploitation increase.”

Although the survey showed low levels of trust in the integrity of cash assistance distribution in the Gaza Strip, with 51.9% of respondents reporting low trust, 43.3% moderate trust, and only 4.7% high trust, respondents broadly agreed on ways to make the system fairer.

These included clearly publishing eligibility criteria, establishing a unified database of beneficiaries, creating a single platform for registration and follow-up, strengthening independent oversight, improving coordination among the organizations involved, publishing regular reports on aid distribution, and improving complaints mechanisms.

The question remains: will anyone listen?