The actor as a whole — political system, leadership, military capacity, alliances, strengths and vulnerabilities. The Force Atlas covers the units and equipment inside each one.
Israel, the Palestinian territories and LebanonConflict systemPublished
Published
Newest profile reviewed
2026-10-13
Coverage reviewed
2026-10-11
Weekly review / event-driven updates
Figures carry their own uncertainty. Population, economic and military-spending data in wartime are estimates, often contested; every figure on an actor record shows its own as-of date and confidence grade.
The actors14 actors, in the module's own order. Each opens a full profile: political system, leadership, forces, economy, stated and assessed objectives, constraints and red lines — every figure with its own as-of date, sources and confidence grade.Interrogate these actors in Explore →
Israel is the one party present on every front of the Levant system, and in October 2026 it holds ground on all three. In Gaza the Israeli military has stood behind a "yellow line" since the October 2025 ceasefire; the line initially left about half of the Strip under its control, and the prime minister said in May 2026 that his instructions were to reach 70 per cent. In southern Lebanon it holds what the UN calls a "forward defence line" — the "Yellow Line" in Israeli usage — up to 10 km north of the Blue Line, and under the Trilateral Framework of 26 June 2026 ties its progressive redeployment to verified disarmament, with no timeline. In the West Bank it has suspended clearance-revenue transfers to the Palestinian Authority since May 2025 and adopted land and administrative measures in Area C in February 2026. The government is a caretaker: the Knesset dissolved on 17 July 2026 and an election is due on 27 October, so every open arrangement in this module waits on the next coalition.
State party · arms monopoly and southern deployment
The Lebanese state is the party to every Israel–Lebanon instrument in force — resolution 1701, the November 2024 cessation of hostilities, the April 2026 cessation and the Trilateral Framework of 26 June 2026 — while Hezbollah, the armed organisation those instruments are about, signed none of them. Since August 2025 the cabinet has committed the state to a monopoly of arms: it tasked the army with a plan, welcomed and took note of that plan in September 2025 while keeping it secret, and heard the army's second phase in February 2026. On 2 March 2026, after Hezbollah fired on Israel, the cabinet banned all of Hezbollah's security and military activity as unlawful and ordered the army to implement the plan north of the Litani. In the Trilateral Framework Lebanon undertook the complete and verified disarmament of all non-state armed groups anywhere in Lebanon, against a progressive Israeli redeployment with no timeline. Hezbollah's ministers remain in the government and parliament has extended its own term to May 2028, so the state that has banned Hezbollah's military activity still governs with it.
Interim self-government · West Bank administration
The Palestinian Authority is the interim self-government created under the Oslo accords, with civil and security powers in Areas A and B of the West Bank. It is not the same body as the Palestine Liberation Organization, which signed Oslo and holds the offices that decide succession, nor as Fatah, the party that dominates both; this module records all three through this actor and its relationships. The PA has not administered Gaza since 2007, but resolution 2803 makes it the end-state of Gaza's transition: the Board of Peace administers until the PA has "satisfactorily completed its reform program". Its finances depend on revenue Israel collects for it, and the World Bank reports those transfers completely suspended since May 2025, with wages paid at 50–70 per cent through 2025. Succession has been codified — a PLO vice-presidency since April 2025 and a constitutional declaration on interim succession in October 2025 — but elections have not: on 10 October 2026 a presidential decree postponed presidential and legislative elections to 11 September 2027.
Political-armed organisation · party to the Gaza ceasefire
Hamas is the Palestinian Islamist organisation that has controlled Gaza since 2007, led the attack on Israel of 7 October 2023, and is a party — through mediators — to every Gaza arrangement since. Under the October 2025 ceasefire it returned the last living hostages by 13 October 2025 and the last deceased hostage's remains were recovered on 26 January 2026. The question left is its weapons. The US plan endorsed by resolution 2803 excludes it from any governance role and requires demilitarisation; the Board of Peace's first report names Hamas's refusal to accept verified decommissioning as the principal obstacle; Hamas approved the Board's 30 July 2026 roadmap, which links decommissioning to a phased Israeli withdrawal and which Israel has not signed. Hamas has said it will hand administration and policing to the Palestinian technocratic committee, which in October 2026 has still not entered Gaza.
Armed organisation · Gaza and the northern West Bank
Palestinian Islamic Jihad is the second armed Palestinian organisation in Gaza and the one most closely tied to Iran in US government reporting, which has described Iran as its principal source of funding and training. It is not a governing authority and holds no administrative role in Gaza; it enters the module's mechanisms as an armed organisation whose weapons fall under the same decommissioning provisions as Hamas's. The Board of Peace roadmap of 30 July 2026 requires all factions, not Hamas alone, to cease military operations and hand weapons and governance functions to the Palestinian technocratic committee. In the northern West Bank, armed formations such as the Jenin Brigade, which press and the parties describe as linked mainly to PIJ and Hamas, were the target of the PA's own operation in December 2024 and of the IDF's "Iron Wall" operation from January 2025.
Hezbollah is both a Lebanese political party, with ministers in the government and a bloc in parliament, and the armed organisation every Israel–Lebanon instrument is designed to disarm — none of which it has signed. It entered the 2026 war on 2 March, firing rockets and drones at Israel after the US–Israeli strikes on Iran; Israel answered with a countrywide air campaign and ground operations from about 16 March. The same day the cabinet banned all its security and military activity as unlawful; Hezbollah rejected the decision and its ministers stayed in government. A US–Iran memorandum announced on 14 June stipulated a cessation on the Lebanese front, and a Hezbollah–Israel ceasefire took effect on 19 June, according to the UN. Its secretary-general called the Trilateral Framework of 26 June "null and void". UNIFIL last detected Hezbollah projectiles on 21 June, according to Security Council Report, while attacks on Israeli forces inside Lebanon continue according to Israel. The US Treasury said in November 2025 that the IRGC-Qods Force had transferred over $1 billion to it, mostly through money exchange companies.
External power · patron of Hezbollah and Palestinian armed groups
Iran enters the Levant system as the principal external supporter of Hezbollah and, according to US government reporting, of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Its war with Israel and the United States is the Iran–Gulf module's record; what this record holds is how Iranian support reaches Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, and how that changed. The fall of the Assad government in December 2024 and Lebanon's ban on Iranian flights from February 2025 closed the land and air routes, after which funding was rerouted through Türkiye, Iraq, the sea and exchange houses, and more than $1bn reached Hezbollah after the November 2024 ceasefire, according to a UN report. The war also connected the fronts formally: the US–Iran memorandum announced on 14 June 2026 stipulated a cessation of hostilities on the Lebanese front, according to the UN. No primary evidence of Iranian funding routes to Hamas or PIJ after 2025 was found.
External power · mediator, guarantor and Israel's principal ally
The United States holds the chair or the pen on nearly every arrangement in the Levant system while remaining Israel's principal ally and military supplier. In Gaza it wrote the 20-point plan that resolution 2803 annexes, its president chairs the Board of Peace, a US officer commands the authorised but undeployed International Stabilization Force, and US Central Command set up the Civil-Military Coordination Center in October 2025. In Lebanon it chaired the 2024 cessation-of-hostilities Mechanism, brokered the April 2026 cessation and supports the Trilateral Framework of 26 June 2026, whose military coordination group it facilitates and whose assistance it conditions on "verifiable milestones". In the West Bank its Security Coordinator supports the Palestinian security services. Underneath all of it sits a ten-year, $38bn military assistance memorandum with Israel running to fiscal year 2028.
Egypt is the Levant system's southern interface: the only state other than Israel that borders Gaza, a mediator and guarantor of the Gaza arrangements, and since 2025 the buyer in Israel's largest gas export deal. Resolution 2803 credits it, with the United States, Qatar and Türkiye, with facilitating the October 2025 ceasefire, and with them it developed the Board of Peace's roadmap of July 2026. Cairo hosts the Palestinian technocratic committee, which held its first meeting there in January 2026 and has not entered Gaza, and Egypt leads the training of Gaza's vetted police. The Rafah crossing reopened for people on 2 February 2026 under an EU border mission. The 1979 peace treaty's security annex caps Egyptian forces in Sinai zone by zone, which is why any Egyptian deployment near Gaza is also a treaty question.
Jordan is the West Bank's only external land interface. The Allenby / King Hussein Bridge carries Palestinian travel and trade to Jordan, and its closures are Israeli decisions: after a Jordanian truck driver killed two Israeli soldiers there on 18 September 2025, Israel closed it, reopened it to passengers within days and to goods and aid only around 10 December 2025. The 1994 peace treaty binds the two states on water, which Israel supplies from the Jordan and Yarmouk under Annex II, and Jordan buys gas from Israel's Leviathan field. Article 9 of the treaty states that Israel respects Jordan's "present special role" in the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem — a provision whose scope the parties dispute. Jordan is also a partner in Gaza police training under the US plan.
Qatar is in the Levant system as a mediator and guarantor of the Gaza arrangements. Its prime minister announced the January 2025 ceasefire in Doha; resolution 2803 credits it, with the United States, Egypt and Türkiye, with facilitating the October 2025 ceasefire; and as one of the four guarantors it helped develop the Board of Peace roadmap of July 2026. A Qatari official sits on the Gaza Executive Board. Doha has hosted Hamas's political bureau since 2012, which Qatar says was established at Washington's request, and Israel struck Hamas leaders there on 9 September 2025. Whether the office operates in Doha in 2026 is not established.
UN peacekeeping force · final mandate to 31 December 2026
UNIFIL is the UN force in southern Lebanon and, until the end of 2026, the only neutral observer of the Blue Line with a standing count of what crosses it. Resolution 2790 of 28 August 2025, adopted unanimously, extended its mandate "for a final time": it ceases operations on 31 December 2026 and withdraws within a year. The Secretary-General set out three options for what might follow in June 2026, and the Council had taken no action on any of them by 11 October 2026. During the 2026 war the force stayed at all its positions with a reduced footprint; seven peacekeepers were killed between February and June, two by Israeli fire in one incident and four in two incidents the UN attributes to non-state actors, "presumably Hizbullah". It hosted the 2024 cessation-of-hostilities Mechanism, which suspended its meetings on 18 March 2026; the Trilateral Framework of June 2026 does not mention UNIFIL.
UN agency · services to Palestine refugees under Israeli restriction
UNRWA is the UN agency that provides education, health and relief services to Palestine refugees, including in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Israeli law now bars it from operating where Israel governs. Two Knesset laws of October 2024 prohibited its activity in sovereign Israeli territory and contact with it by Israeli state bodies; an amendment of 29 December 2025 extended "contact" to utilities, cutting electricity, water and banking to its facilities, and was applied to East Jerusalem sites in January 2026, according to reporting. On 22 October 2025 the International Court of Justice advised that Israel, as occupying power, must facilitate relief, including by UNRWA, and found Israel's allegations about the agency's neutrality unsubstantiated; the opinion is not binding. The General Assembly extended UNRWA's mandate to 30 June 2029 in December 2025.
Transitional administration for Gaza under resolution 2803
The Board of Peace is the transitional administration for Gaza that resolution 2803, adopted on 17 November 2025 by 13 votes to none with China and Russia abstaining, welcomed as having "international legal personality". Chaired by the US president, it coordinates redevelopment and funding until the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform programme, may establish operational entities for governance, reconstruction, services and movement, and is authorised with an International Stabilization Force until 31 December 2027, reporting to the Council every six months. Its structure was announced on 16 January 2026: a founding Executive Board, a Gaza Executive Board, Nickolay Mladenov as High Representative for Gaza and a Palestinian technocratic committee chaired by Ali Sha'ath. By October 2026 the committee was still based in Cairo, the force had not deployed inside Gaza, and the Board's 15-point roadmap of 30 July 2026 had been approved by Hamas but not signed by Israel.
Non-state actor→
Evidence and grading
Alignment
A grouping the module authored, with its own stated meaning. It is not a Vigil verdict about who is on whose side, and no two modules use the same alignment vocabulary.
Confidence
How well established Vigil considers this assessment to be. It is not a measure of how severe the situation is.
