40,000 flee Gaza City, Netanyahu responds to Charlie Kirk rumors, Israeli Minister Calls Gaza a "Real Estate Bonanza"
Drop Site Daily: September 18, 2025
Israeli attacks kill 42 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly in Gaza City as Israeli tanks and troops move in. Forty thousand people flee Gaza City, with new bombings near two critical hospitals. Israeli far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich describes the Gaza Strip as a “real estate bonanza.” Palestinian Prisoners’ Club reports a scabies outbreak has afflicted two prisons in the Negev and the West Bank. The Fed cuts rates by 0.25 points. ICE actions continue to torment Chicago’s immigrant community. A U.S. judge orders pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil to be deported to Algeria or Syria. ABC suspends Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show over a remark about the response to Charlie Kirk’s murder. Iran signals a willingness to work with atomic regulators. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan announce a mutual defense pledge.
This is Drop Site Daily, our new, free daily news recap. We send it Monday through Friday.
Watch yesterday’s ⚡️Drop Site Recap | September 17, 2025
💡 125% of Target Achieved!
Thanks to your support, we’ve raised $192,525—more than 125% of our $150K goal—to help journalists evacuate Gaza City and survive displacement. Funds cover evacuation, shelter, food, water, and power, keeping frontline reporters on the ground.
Next step: sustain the fund to support journalists and their families through the ongoing crisis.
The Genocide in Gaza
At least 42 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza on Thursday, including 35 in Gaza City, according to Al Jazeera.
Seventy-nine killed and 228 injured arrived at hospitals in Gaza in the past 24 hours, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. At least nine aid seekers were killed and 33 were injured. This brings the recorded death toll from the Israeli genocide in Gaza to 65,141 and 165,925 injuries.
Four more deaths, including one child, were recorded over the past 24 hours due to starvation and malnutrition, bringing the total since the start of the war to 435, including 147 children.
Nearly 40,000 people were forcibly displaced from Gaza City this week, according to the UN, bringing the total displaced since Israel launched its offensive on the city in mid-August to 200,000, many of them women, children, and the elderly. The UN also reports over 23,000 pregnant women in Gaza lack adequate health care and are forced to birth in the streets with no doctors or clean water. Fifteen babies are born each week in Gaza without medical help.
Journalist Mohammed Haniya issues a “final call” from Gaza City, describing violent shelling, residential demolitions, massacres, and near-total loss of communications as tanks advance toward the roundabout at the end of Al-Jalaa, a main street running north-south in the heart of Gaza City. He warns that the city is facing extermination on an unprecedented scale and calls the current period the most dangerous phase of the war.
Israeli forces struck near Gaza City’s Al-Shifa and Al-Sahaba Hospitals around 6 p.m. on Wednesday, killing at least 16 people, including 13 near Al-Shifa and three near Al-Sahaba. Reports indicate the Al-Shifa strike targeted a family evacuating south, and at least one journalist was killed.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, described Gaza as a “real estate bonanza” and said a business plan for the territory is “on President Trump’s desk,” with negotiations already underway with the U.S. He framed the ongoing demolitions as part of “urban renewal,” stating, “The demolition phase is always the first phase of urban renewal. We did that, now we need to start building.”
Ceasefire Negotiations
Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas leader and a member of its negotiating team who survived the Israeli airstrike on Doha last week, described the attack for the first time in an interview on Al Jazeera Arabic on Wednesday. “We were in a meeting, the negotiating delegation and some advisers. Less than an hour after we began reviewing the American proposal that we received from the Qatari mediators, we heard loud explosions,” Hamad said. “We immediately left the scene, because we knew from the start that the explosions were Israeli shelling. We’ve lived in Gaza and experienced Israeli shelling before.”
Hamad said the U.S. has “no credibility or ability to act as a mediator.” He accused Washington of changing proposals “180 degrees” after consulting Israel and said Qatar received a U.S. proposal at night and “hours later Trump told the Israelis: ‘Go and kill the negotiating delegation.’” Hamad said Trump “speaks with Israel’s tongue… supports genocide.”.
Hamad also urged Arab governments to take a stance “beyond condemnation,” calling the war a test of Arab honor and security and demanded a united Arab response to block Israel’s campaign to “change the face of the Middle East.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put out a video denying his government had anything to do with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, his second denial. He suggested such claims may be coming from people “paid by Qatar,” though his own office is embroiled in scandal over Qatari payments to some of his top advisers. Netanyahu’s decision to once again publicly deny the allegations gives oxygen to the storyline, suggesting Netanyahu paradoxically sees some public-relations benefit to it.
The MAGA movement continues to tear itself apart debating the pressure campaign Israel and its backers waged on Kirk in the months before his assassination. Ryan Grim posted video Thursday from Kirk’s late-July focus group with young conservatives on Israel, in which he openly discusses the pressure he was under to cancel Tucker Carlson’s upcoming TPUSA appearance.
West Bank
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club says scabies outbreaks are spreading in Negev and Ofer prisons, alongside escalating repression that includes electric shock batons and rubber bullets. The briefing describes hunger, denial of hygiene supplies and showers, and humiliating conditions—while the total number of Palestinian detainees has surged past 11,000, the highest since the Second Intifada.
U.S. News
Continuing his administration’s spate of punitive action in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk, President Trump says he is moving to designate ANTIFA “A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.” Antifa is not an organization.
Trump has reportedly given Tony Blair the green light to rally international and regional partners behind a plan for governing Gaza after the war, according to the Times of Israel. Blair’s proposal would create a UN-backed transitional authority to run Gaza until a reformed Palestinian Authority can take over.
An immigration judge has ordered Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia graduate student and Palestinian activist, deported to Algeria or Syria, citing omissions on his green card application. Judge Jamee Comans said Khalil misrepresented past affiliations and denied his waiver request. Khalil called the case a political reprisal and vowed to appeal within 30 days.
ICE officers who killed Silverio Villegas González in Franklin Park, Chicago, were not wearing body cameras, according to NBC News. ICE claims Villegas González resisted arrest and endangered an officer, but no bodycam or dashcam footage has been released and surveillance video seems to contradict this. Advocates, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, and Rep. Chuy García are demanding transparency and calling for mandatory body cameras when force is used, while the FBI leads the investigation.
ICE agents tazed a U.S. citizen in the face during a raid in Des Plaines, Ill., hospitalizing him and briefly detaining him along with his family. His undocumented father remains in custody, while the incident—just days after the Franklin Park ICE shooting—has heightened fear in Chicago’s Latino community.
The State Department has abruptly removed several of its most senior Syria-focused diplomats from the Syria Regional Platform, which oversees U.S. policy from Jordan, Turkey, and Washington, according to Reuters. The shake-up comes as the U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack pushes Washington’s Kurdish allies to integrate into Syria’s central military and security structures — signaling a shift toward restoring Damascus’s control over Kurdish-held areas. Analysts and diplomatic sources suggest some of the removed diplomats were more sympathetic to Kurdish autonomy or skeptical of returning full control to Damascus.
The Pentagon is shifting $630M from the 2024 Israel Security Supplemental to restock weapons used in the June Iran-Israel war, including “Operation Midnight Hammer,” the U.S.-led strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, according to The War Zone. Nearly $500M will replace 150+ THAAD interceptors fired to shield Israel, raising concerns over U.S. missile stockpiles. Another $130M will restock MOPs, glide bombs, and rockets used by B-2s, F-22s, and F-35s in the massive strikes on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.
The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark rate by 0.25 points to 4–4.25% in an 11–1 vote, signaling likely additional cuts in October and December, despite Trump’s calls for larger reductions. The Fed cited slowing job gains, elevated inflation, and economic uncertainty, while a court blocked Trump’s attempt to remove Governor Lisa Cook, who voted with the majority.
Drop Site reports that activists and elected officials protested at the Brooklyn Navy Yard over contracts with Crye Precision and Easy Aerial, suppliers of military equipment to the Israeli military. Demonstrators, including Rep. Nydia Velazquez, Sen. Jabari Brisport, Council Member Lincoln Restler, and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, staged a “Sleeping Dragon” blockade, while calling for an end to Navy Yard leases with companies supporting Israeli forces. Organizers demand the eviction of military contractors and a ban on future leases for weapons or surveillance producers, citing moral failure and the betrayal of public trust.
Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, announced his resignation after 47 years, saying that he can no longer stay “in good conscience.” He said the independence promised in the 2000 Unilever merger—which allowed the company to speak on peace, justice, and human rights—is no longer guaranteed, pointing to conflicts over statements on Israeli settlements and Gaza. Greenfield vowed to carry the brand’s values forward outside the company, while co-founder Ben Cohen will stay on to continue advocating for its independence.
ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show indefinitely after Nexstar Media Group, the largest U.S. local TV station owner, refused to air the show following Kimmel’s monologue on the Utah shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The move comes amid Nexstar’s $6.2 billion bid to take over Tegna and heightened political pressure on media companies from the FCC and Trump administration.
Former President Barack Obama said the October 7 attackers viewed Israeli families as “less than us,” condemning their actions as dehumanizing. Pressed by protesters to address Gaza, he added that the same mindset exists among those who deprive people there of food, though he stopped short of naming Israel or the U.S., which are driving the famine.
Florida Sen. Rick Scott refused to meet with the family of two Palestinian-American constituents killed and abducted by Israeli forces in the West Bank. After months of ignored calls and emails, the family flew to Washington, D.C., only to be told by Scott’s office to “email scheduling.”
A New Mexico legislative report warns the state could face up to $1.6 billion in cleanup costs from abandoned oil wells as bankrupt operators abandon sites. Plugging wells costs about $165,000 each, with tank battery cleanups reaching millions, while the state’s Oil and Gas Reclamation Fund holds only $66 million. Lawmakers have proposed reforms to hold owners accountable, though previous measures to curb orphan wells have failed.
International News
Iran signaled a willingness to clarify the fate of its highly-enriched uranium stockpile, potentially buried at sites struck by the U.S. in June, advancing talks with the IAEA. The country has proposed an “interim deal” to report on its stockpile within a month of signing, which could delay UN “snapback” sanctions and buy time for diplomacy. While Tehran considers renewed U.S. talks, if strikes are halted, hardliners warn that disclosure could reveal its remaining nuclear capacity to Israel and the U.S.
Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement, pledging to treat any attack on one as an attack on both. Signed in Riyadh by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and PM Shehbaz Sharif, the pact deepens decades of security cooperation, building on decades of Saudi-Pakistani intelligence and military partnership amid growing doubts in the region about U.S. protection. A Saudi source speaking to Reuters, asked about whether the defense partnership would include nuclear cooperation, stated that "this is a comprehensive defensive agreement that encompasses all military means."
Thai security forces clashed with Cambodian protesters in a disputed border area Wednesday, leaving at least 28 injured and threatening a fragile July ceasefire. Both sides accuse the other of provocation: Thailand called the clash a Cambodian mob encroaching on its land, while Cambodia says Thai troops fired live rounds, rubber bullets, and deployed sound weapons as villagers tried to remove barbed wire.
The European Union announced that it was preparing a new sanctions package targeting Russia that may be released as early as this Friday. The new package, aimed at increasing pressure on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, includes measures targeting Russian banks, oil companies, energy traders, and the use of cryptocurrency by the government as an alternate financial channel.
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski stated that Poland is coordinating with allies to respond to alleged Russian drones that violated its airspace, accusing Russia of attempting to undermine NATO’s mutual defense commitments. The drone incursion, involving 21 drones over seven hours from Belarus and Ukraine, coincided with Russian strikes in western Ukraine. While Moscow denied responsibility, Sikorski dismissed its explanations as contradictory and insisted the violation was intentional, while calling for increased NATO air defense activity in Poland.
A new campaign called #GameOverIsrael is urging European soccer federations to boycott Israel over its killing of hundreds of Palestinian athletes and destruction of Gaza’s sports infrastructure. Modeled after Russia’s 2022 exclusion from global competition, the campaign has backing from athletes, celebrities, and political figures, with supporters saying “football associations… have been sports-washing Israel's war crimes and genocide.” Read more from Zeteo’s Prem Thakker here.
At the Brian Eno-organized Together for Palestine benefit concert in London, actor Benedict Cumberbatch recited Mahmoud Darwish’s poem, “On This Land,” honoring Palestine’s enduring identity. From the poem:
On this land there are reasons to live—
This land, the lady of lands.
The motherland of beginnings, the motherland of all ends.
She was known as Palestine.
She forevermore will be known as Palestine.
More from Drop Site
Drop Site is excited to welcome Nika Soon-Shiong as our new publisher. With a Ph.D. from Oxford and experience on the LA Times editorial board, Nika brings unmatched expertise in research and journalism to help us grow our audience and deepen our impact. She shares our commitment to fearless, transparent reporting, holding power to account, and covering the stories others ignore—from human rights crises to America’s role in global conflicts.
Sara Awad gives an account of her journey out of Gaza City: Forced from her home in northwest Gaza City by relentless Israeli attacks, Drop Site contributor Sara Awad recounts the harrowing journey south to Deir al-Balah, the unimaginable cost of displacement, and the struggle to survive. Living in a tent with her family, she reflects, “This phase of living in a tent will never define me. My home will remain forever in my mind and in my heart.” This is now the reality for hundreds of thousands of repeatedly displaced Palestinians: constant movement with no real safe haven in sight.
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein joined Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky on Breaking Points to discuss leaked Discord chats tied to Tyler Robinson, the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk. Grim and Jashinsky also examined Trump’s TikTok “deal,” which preserves China’s algorithm but hands control to Oracle’s Larry Ellison and GOP donor Jeff Yas, noting it gained momentum after Oct. 7 under pro-Israel pressure to curb pro-Palestinian content.
Programming note: We have switched our WhatsApp group to a WhatsApp channel, which is far superior. You can sign up here to get updates from us on WhatsApp.
If you want to continue getting this newsletter, you don’t have to do anything. But if this is too much—we do try to be mindful of your inbox—you can unsubscribe from this newsletter while continuing to get the rest of our reporting. Just go into your account here at this link, scroll down, and toggle the button next to “Drop Site Daily” to the off setting. It looks like this:
I am so grateful to have this daily source of news!
I just called Senator Scott's office to complain about the horrible way he treated those family members of the 2 Floridians who are Palestinian American and were killed by Israel. Shame on him. He needs to be gone from government - doesn't care about his constituents at all.