Food security, the sustainable ability of a household to feed its members in sufficient quantity and quality to ensure healthy lives for each, is often compromised during periods of conflict. Throughout the last 20 years, humanitarian aid agencies and government donors have been challenged by the multiple causes of food insecurity world-wide. Massive food shortages, large-scale diarrheal epidemics, poverty, and natural disaster have all contributed to food insecurity and subsequent malnutrition, anemia, and micronutrient deficiencies. Since the onset of the second intifada in the Palestinian Territories that began in September 2000, no reliable, systematic assessment of food security and humanitarian indicators has been done.

CARE West Bank/Gaza and other international and Palestinian NGOs received anecdotal evidence that the Palestinian economy and health infrastructure were declining precipitously from the conflict, and that health, in particular, nutritional problems, were emerging.

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