The Gaza Strip is divided into five governorates: North Gaza, Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, which were affected differently by more than two years of hostilities, shifting frontlines, displacement patterns, and access dynamics. While the crisis remains nationwide in scope, needs, vulnerabilities, service functionality, and recovery prospects vary significantly across sub-national levels. Understanding these differences is essential to enable targeted, context-specific humanitarian response planning and prioritisation. Since the escalation in October 2023 and throughout 2024–2025, the Gaza Strip has experienced extensive destruction of civilian infrastructure, severe displacement, loss of livelihoods, collapse of public services, and widespread food insecurity, including periods of confirmed famine in several governorates. Gaza’s economy now stands at just 13% of its 2022 size. The dynamics of displacement have shifted multiple times, from north-to-south flight during peak hostilities to partial return movements following localized ceasefires to continued secondary displacement driven by insecurity, infrastructure collapse, seasonal hazards, and a lack of habitable shelter. These mobility patterns have created new concentrations of vulnerability, often in areas overwhelmed by limited services, operational constraints, and damage to critical lifelines.
Despite the October 2025 ceasefire agreement, conditions remain volatile. Localised bombardments, ground incursions, explosive ordnance contamination, winter storms, constrained humanitarian access, damaged logistics corridors, and disrupted governance continue to shape living conditions across the Strip. Humanitarian access and service rehabilitation are uneven, with disparities in health access, water availability, food distribution, education continuity, and shelter adequacy across governorates.
This governorate-level analysis captures recent developments shaping needs and response feasibility, while providing concise humanitarian and sectoral snapshots tailored to each governorate. It also highlights emerging risks to inform operational planning. Each profile includes a short timeline of recent events, a humanitarian overview, key sectoral details where available, and forward-looking risks. Together, these summaries offer a consolidated picture of evolving conditions across Gaza’s governorates to support targeted, evidence-based decision-making.
