FOREWORD
A rapidly changing socio economic environment in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) creates a dire need for reliable updated, socio-economic information to gauge the changing living conditions for Palestinian households. In the current circumstances the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), international and United Nations (UN) agencies have been forced to rely on macro-level indicators, outdated information, ad-hoc surveys and proxies, insufficient to provide a solid basis for programme and policy interventions.
The World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have worked on food security information and analysis since 2003 to improve the availability and detail of information relating to food security in the oPt. Over the past 3 years, improvements have been made with regard to the development of a methodology to measure changes in socio economic and food security indicators. After undertaking the final revisions this year, the same methodology will be applied for future surveys to allow for comparison and trends analysis over time.
The Gaza Strip survey report is based on data collected from April to June 2009 on a sample of 7,536 households. A similar survey was conducted in the West Bank with data collected between January and February 2009 over a sample size of 4,791 households and the main report issued in August 2009. The West Bank and Gaza Strip data sets are the first and only statistical data sets generated since the 2007 PECS. The reference period for many questions on the Gaza Strip survey questionnaire captures a snapshot of households' income, consumption and expenditure patterns before and after the Israeli military operation Cast Lead between the 27th of December 2008 and the 18th of January 2009. The survey report therefore largely reflects the socio-economic and food security situation in the aftermaths of the military operation. Now that the methodology is finalized and is being institutionalized within the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' (PCBS) regular statistical calendar, data analysis of future surveys will be conducted and published within a much shorter timeframe. While the survey report provides an overall view of the socio-economic and food security conditions of households, further working papers are being prepared to focus on specific issues such as household and governorate profiling. Interested users are invited to submit their queries directly to the WFP, FAO and PCBS team.
The time lapse between the data collection and the publication of this report must be taken into account when examining the results. While the survey provides the reader with a good picture of the situation resulting from events taking place in the first part of 2009, several factors have affected the socio-economic and political environment in the months following this period.
In the Gaza Strip, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) decreased between the first and the second half of 2008. However, between December 2008 and March 2009, the Food CPI in Gaza experienced a rapid increase mainly due to the tightened security restrictions during the latter months of 2008 and the recent military offensive in Gaza, which affected the supplies of food commodities and caused a more severe increase in the food prices in the Gaza Strip than in the West Bank. While food prices for many commodities have been slowly decreasing since their peak during the first quarter of 2009, the prices of most commodities remain above their long-term average. The increase in food prices has been coupled with a reduction of real wages which has curtailed household's purchasing power, further strained due to the recent war. The socio-economic and food security findings show that while the prevalence of food insecurity has remained in the same range in the Gaza Strip, livelihoods continue to deteriorate with humanitarian assistance minimally sustaining the Gaza population to prevent them from complete destitution. It is hoped that the publication of this report and the dissemination of the data will inform humanitarian programming within the Gaza Strip that will meaningfully deliver the appropriate assistance to address the needs of all the food insecure and vulnerable population and provide a solid ground on which to lift these populations out of their hardship conditions.