Stated · Vigil assessment
Objectives
What the 7 actors this module authors a posture for are trying to achieve — stated positions and Vigil’s assessments, kept apart. Every other party appears under Profiles without one.
Conflict system
Parties6 groups, and what each one means
- IsraelThe Israeli state and its institutions. One party present on every front of the system, not a coalition.
- Lebanese stateThe Lebanese government and the forces it commands. Kept separate from Hezbollah, which sits in the government but is not the state.
- Palestinian institutionsThe Palestinian Authority, with the PLO and Fatah carried on its record. Grouped by institution, not by position on any arrangement.
- Political-armed organisationsHamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah: organisations that are at once political movements and armed forces, grouped by that character rather than by a common command or a common sponsor. Iranian support is a graded relationship on each record, not a group label.
- External powersStates acting on the system from outside it — as mediators, guarantors, patrons, suppliers or interface neighbours.
- International bodiesUN bodies and the Board of Peace: institutions whose mandates come from the Security Council or the General Assembly.
Kerem Shalom, 13 November 2025, a month into the Gaza ceasefire. Aid cargo palletised on the yard between the numbered gates of the crossing, where goods for Gaza are offloaded, inspected and reloaded; the lorry is leaving after unloading. Kerem Shalom is the cargo crossing through which goods enter the Strip.US Army / DVIDS · public domain · resizedImage: A wide, empty asphalt yard under an overcast sky, enclosed by a tall grey concrete wall marked with large gate numbers, with rows of shrink-wrapped pallets of boxed tents and bottled water on the right and a lorry with a trailer driving out through a gap in the wall.
Current state
Where this conflict stands
Graded per item · As of 2026-10-11
Levant is one conflict system in which no arena is settled and each is held in place by an arrangement rather than a settlement. In Gaza, the ceasefire of October 2025 stands under UN Security Council resolution 2803 and a Board of Peace whose Palestinian administrative committee still works from Cairo and whose stabilization force has not deployed; Israeli strikes continue, Israeli forces hold a line enclosing about 60 per cent of the Strip by Israel's own account (OCHA records access restrictions on 65 per cent of its land), and goods enter through a single cargo crossing. In the West Bank, the Oslo-era fiscal and administrative architecture is formally in force and hollowed out: Israel has transferred no clearance revenue since May 2025, deductions are now written into Israeli statute, and the banking link that settles Palestinian trade runs on extensions to the end of 2026. On the Israel–Lebanon frontier, the 2026 war gave way to a ceasefire in effect since 19 June and a Trilateral Framework that ties Israeli redeployment, civilian return and reconstruction to verified disarmament zone by zone, with no timeline, while Israeli forces hold an area up to 10 km north of the Blue Line and UNIFIL ends its operations on 31 December 2026 with no successor decided. The regional interface runs through the same channels — Egyptian, Qatari, Turkish and US guarantees in Gaza, Israeli gas to Egypt and Jordan, and the war with Iran, during which Israel closed Gaza's crossings and Leviathan and Karish were shut from 28 February 2026. In Vigil's assessment the connecting mechanism is conditionality: in every arena, access, money and withdrawal are made to wait on disarmament or reform that has not happened, so the arrangements suspend the conflict rather than resolve it.
31 Dec 2027
Board of Peace and International Stabilization Force authorised until, under resolution 2803 (2025)
1 crossing
Cargo crossing into Gaza in operation (Kerem Shalom); Zikim closed since 24 May 2026
59%
Gaza population in IPC Phase 3 or above, April–June 2026; no area classified in famine
65%
Share of Gaza's land under access restrictions, per OCHA
Since May 2025
Clearance-revenue transfers to the Palestinian Authority completely suspended
~$1.3bn
Palestinian Authority financing gap in 2025 after Israeli deductions — 7.7% of GDP
$71.4bn
Gaza recovery and reconstruction needs over a decade — World Bank, EU and UN assessment covering Oct 2023 – Oct 2025
329,686
People still displaced in Lebanon, IOM Displacement Tracking Matrix (Round 118), against 877,203 recorded returns
31 Dec 2026
UNIFIL ceases operations under resolution 2790 (2025); no successor arrangement decided
Coverageby country and by arena
- Israel57 recordsThe Israeli state as a party to all four arenas: the government, the Israel Defense Forces and the bodies that administer crossings and the territories, Israel's offshore gas and its ports, and the effects of the 2026 wars on Israeli territory. Records concerning the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are filed under Palestine; crossings and the Jerusalem record stay outside every lens, because filing them would take a position on a line or on the city.
- Lebanon35 recordsThe Lebanese state on the frontier: the presidency and Council of Ministers and their decisions on the monopoly of arms, the Lebanese Armed Forces, and the displacement, casualty and reconstruction records of the 2026 war.
- Palestine50 recordsThe Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and East Jerusalem where a record concerns it: the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as separate records, the Gaza administration and stabilisation arrangements, and the humanitarian and fiscal records of both territories. Palestine is a territorial-political identity in Vigil's registry, which takes no position on statehood or sovereignty and merges no authority or organisation into it. Crossings and the Jerusalem record stay outside every lens.
- Regional — applies to all three16 records
Counts cover this module’s mapped places, events, zones, campaigns, terrain, corridors, impact chains and actor profiles. A country count is what is specifically about that country; it is not the whole of what bears on it.
And by arena
GazaWest Bank & JerusalemIsrael–Lebanon / Blue LineRegional interface
Two dimensions, deliberately not the same one. An arena is the mechanism a record belongs to; a country is whose territory it concerns. Naming the arenas after the three states would have rebuilt three national modules inside one, and lost the cross-border explanation this module exists for.
Backgroundwhy this matters
Why it matters
The arrangements built here in 2025 and 2026 are new instruments being tested for the first time: a transitional administration authorised by the Security Council but run outside the UN, a stabilization force under US unified command, and a border framework that makes no mention of the UN force on that border. More than two million people in Gaza depend on aid that passes one cargo crossing, and the Palestinian Authority's payroll depends on a transfer Israel has suspended. Egypt and Jordan import Israeli gas, and power cuts were reported in both when Israeli fields shut in 2026, which ties two treaty partners' electricity to the same system.
The system, as analytical objects What Vigil assesses about Levant, as 7 selectable objects. Each carries its own claims, registers, grades and dates, and each opens as itself in Explore — not as a section index.Open Levant in Explore
Vigil assessment
Constraints
What limits those options. A constraint is a structural limit, not a risk rating.
Vigil assessment · Observed
Trajectory
The module’s current phase — The 2026 war and the re-founded Lebanon front (Feb 2026 – present) — and the newest dated review.
Vigil assessment
External relationships
The standing arrangements this module authors between its parties. Each line is the record’s own signature; the analysis, dates and sources are on the record.
Observed
What matters now
The standing questions Vigil is following on this module, each with what its latest review found. The evidence that would change the assessment is on the question.
Vigil assessment · Observed
Economy
3 exposure channels and 6 watch items, as of 2026-10.
Vigil assessment · Observed
Humanitarian
57 dated figures at regional granularity, each with its own basis, as of 2026-10. No operational detail is published.
Latest The newest published work on this area. Coverage reviewed 2026-11-01.Every dated review
Levant developments — 1 November 2026
Three checks carried from last week were answered this week, and none ends the question it answers. In Lebanon, the government commissioner to the Military Court charged 13 people over the seized explosives on 30 October, two in custody and eleven in absentia. Lebanese television named two of them as Hezbollah security officials, but the charge sheet was not read and no state text read names the explosives' owner. In Gaza, OCHA counted 343 commercial truckloads in the week that began with Israel's 19 October announcement. It did not say which crossing they used or how many came from Israel, so the count does not show that the shipments from Israel resumed. Most of the bakeries that had closed for lack of flour were working again by 26 October. In Hebron, OCHA's account adds about 3,000 people displaced, a municipal figure it is still verifying. All main entrances to the city were still closed on 29 October. No source read reports a lockdown of the whole West Bank. OCHA also recorded more settler attacks in October than in any month since 2006. None of the ten standing questions met an observable.
What survived Hezbollah's two wars? A force that fought again is on the record. Its old structure is not
In 2024 Hezbollah lost its Secretary-General and the senior commanders whose deaths it confirmed. Fifteen months after the ceasefire it fought Israel again for more than three months, paused its fire on cue and stopped when a ceasefire came. That proves an armed organisation survived and that its command could run a war. It does not prove the military structure that entered 2024 came back: no successor to any military post has been named, the reorganisation is reported only by anonymous sources, and the force that fought in 2026 fought differently.
Theatre map Interactive · approximate · as of 2026-10-11. Every marker here is a record, and the same markers are selectable in Explore's geography mode with the record open beside them.Open the map in Explore
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Interactive map — tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors, © CARTO. Markers show broad, publicly documented locations; sensitive sites are generalized to area level. Zone fills, where shown, are broad and approximate context with their own dates and confidence — never precise boundaries. The map does not show current deployments, activity or operational readiness, and is not suitable for operational use. Status is dated and contextual — see the methodology.
Watch 10 standing questions on Levant — 4 moved in the current review window, last reviewed 2026-11-01.All 10 Watch questions
- Do residents return to the Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps, or do the camps stay closed under renewed orders?
- Do the bodies of Gaza's transition — the Palestinian administrative committee, the stabilisation force, a vetted police — begin operating inside the Strip?
- Does money reach the Palestinian Authority's payroll and public services, and through which channel?
- Does verified decommissioning of weapons in Gaza begin, and does the line Israeli forces hold move back or forward?
- Is the Israel–Lebanon Framework's zone-by-zone sequence moving — Israeli forces leaving named areas and the Lebanese army entering them — or is the Israeli-held area holding or growing?
- What replaces UNIFIL south of the Litani when its operations cease on 31 December 2026?
Evidence and review status
- Coverage reviewed
- 2026-11-01— the date of this area’s most recent dated Weekly Brief. It records a review of the area as a whole, not a revalidation of every underlying record; each record carries its own date.
- Standing baseline
- 2026-10-11 — the date this conflict’s standing geographic and situational claims are drawn to. Individual records, figures and events carry their own dates.
- Review cadence
- Weekly review / event-driven updates — quiet weeks are published as quiet reviews rather than as silence.
Scope of this coverage. Published since 14 October 2026 and reviewed weekly. The standing frame describes the system as of October 2026; where it carries a casualty, displacement or damage figure, the figure is the counting body's, attributed and dated, never Vigil's own. Forces are recorded at the echelon the parties publish: no inventories, strengths, positions or current deployments are carried, and the structure of the non-state armed organisations is stated as functions, not as a current order of battle.
Source registryMethodology Corrections logGlossary
Found an error in Levant coverage? Corrections are logged in public with the date and what changed — see the corrections log.