JERUSALEM >> The Trump administration’s efforts to downsize the United States Agency for International Development have endangered the funding for food, tents and medical treatment for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to U.S. officials and workers for humanitarian groups funded by the agency.

Officials said threats to the aid supply chain risked destabilizing the fragile ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, which is contingent on the weekly entry of 4,200 aid and commercial trucks to the territory.

With almost all USAID staff set to be placed on administrative leave by Friday night, there will be only a handful of officials left to sign off on and audit hundreds of millions of dollars in outstanding payments to the agency’s partners on the ground in Gaza, raising alarm about how those groups will fund their operations.

Of more than 200 officials on the agency’s Mideast team, just 21 will remain in post to manage its entire regional portfolio, according to an internal agency email reviewed by The New York Times.

The team that organizes emergency aid supplies in dozens of crisis zones around the world each year, of which Gaza was just one, is down to just 70 staff members from more than 1,000.

This is expected to slow or prevent the delivery of food packages to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, as well as tents, mattresses, blankets, hygiene kits and medical treatment, according to three officials and an aid worker. All four people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.

While the aid agency does not operate inside Gaza, it has provided roughly $1 billion in aid to international aid groups on the ground since the war began in October 2023 — about one-third of the total aid response, according to the United Nations. Hundreds of millions of dollars have yet to be disbursed and now may never be transferred to United Nations agencies and other major aid organizations, three officials said.

“They’re making an already fragile ceasefire more fragile,” said Dave Harden, a former USAID mission director for Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “Lifesaving aid to Gaza is going to be disrupted.”

The State Department, which oversees the aid agency, declined to comment.

The agency’s director in Jerusalem referred reporters to the USAID press department, which did not respond to requests for comment. It was unclear if it was still operational.

The World Food Program, the International Organization for Migration and the International Medical Corps, all of which distribute aid or run projects in Gaza funded by USAID, also declined to comment.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a television interview this week that the moves were “not about getting rid of foreign aid,” but an attempt to prevent “rank insubordination” by uncooperative workers.