Israel arrests dozens in West Bank raids as settlers torch mosque; Trump signs bill ending record government shutdown; Lawmakers release 20,000 Epstein files
Drop Site Daily: November 13, 2025
Israeli military kills five in repeated violations of the Gaza ceasefire. Six Palestinian boys disappear in Gaza. 90 Palestinian medical patients to be deported from the West Bank back to Gaza, despite its devastated health care system. Israeli forces arrest over 40 Palestinians overnight in West Bank raids. Settlers torch and deface a mosque in the central West Bank village of Deir Istiya. Trump signs legislation to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. House lawmakers release approximately 20,000 files related to financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, revealing deep connections to U.S. elites, including President Trump, Larry Summers, Steve Bannon, former White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, and Peter Thiel. President Trump makes a concerted effort to stifle Republican participation in any further release of the files. The Trump administration to cut housing grants and aggressively target homeless populations. G7 meets in Ontario, Canada. Israel strikes Tyre in southern Lebanon. India’s RSS sets up a lobby in the United States. Maduro says his country is preparing for guerrilla warfare against the U.S. Ukraine strikes infrastructure inside of Russia and inside of Zaporizhzhia, where Russian troops have been advancing in recent weeks.
This is Drop Site Daily, our new, free daily news recap. We send it Monday through Friday.
The Genocide in Gaza
The Israeli military said on Wednesday it killed four Palestinians in southern Gaza, including one in Khan Younis and three in Rafah where it said troops were in the area destroying underground tunnels. Israeli troops also fatally shot one person in Jabaliya, according to Al Jazeera.
The Israeli military carried out air strikes on Gaza on Thursday, including in Beit Lahiya; eastern areas of Gaza City; and the city of Khan Younis, where artillery shelling was also reported; according to Al Jazeera. The Israeli military also blew up several buildings in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City overnight, according to the Palestinian Information Center.
The bodies of two Palestinians arrived at hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, including one killed in new Israeli attacks and one recovered from under the rubble. At least five Palestinians were wounded. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 is now 69,187 killed, with 170,703 injured.
Since October 11, the first full day of the ceasefire, Israel has killed at least 260 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 632, while 533 bodies have been recovered from under the rubble, according to the Ministry of Health.
Hamas announced in a statement on Thursday that its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, and the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the al-Quds Brigades, will hand over one more Israeli captive’s body today at 8pm Gaza time. Hamas said the body was found today in the Moraj area north of Khan Younis. This is the 25th Israeli captive’s body to be returned to Israel since the ceasefire went into effect on October 10. After today’s handover, the bodies of three more Israeli captives need to be returned as part of the agreement. Under the deal, Israel agreed to exchange 360 Palestinian fighters’ bodies for the 28 Israeli captives’ remains. Israel has so far returned 315 Palestinian bodies. All of them were unidentified and many bore signs of torture, abuse, and summary execution. Only 91 have been identified so far and over 180 who remained unidentified have been buried in mass graves, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Israel plans to deport roughly 90 Palestinian patients—including infants, elderly people, and those in active treatment—from East Jerusalem hospitals back to Gaza next week, according to CNN. Over 94% of Gaza’s hospitals are damaged or destroyed, and doctors and rights groups warn that many deportees will die without care, with Physicians for Human Rights Israel calling the move “unacceptable” and illegal under international law. One patient with kidney failure told CNN that returning to Gaza would mean, “I will die there in two days.”
Israeli soldiers described the routine use of Palestinian civilians—including teenagers—as “mosquitoes,” when the soldiers forced them to walk ahead of troops with phones transmitting GPS data through tunnels and neighborhoods, according to an ITV investigation. Multiple soldiers said the practice became widespread within a week of its introduction, with one commander telling those who objected that they need not worry about international law, only about the “IDF spirit.”
Six Palestinian boys—with ages ranging from 13 to 17—have recently disappeared in Gaza, according to Defense for Children–Palestine. All six vanished after Israeli fire, drone strikes, or attempts to cross Israeli checkpoints, with some families later hearing the boys’ names inside Israeli prisons. These cases follow five confirmed disappearances this summer near the Zikim aid crossing, including 16-year-old Zain Dahman, whose mother searched hospitals and morgues for weeks.
West Bank and Israel
Israeli forces arrested around 40 Palestinians, including several former prisoners, in raids across the occupied West Bank overnight, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society. The arrests took place in the areas of Hebron, Nablus, Tulkarem, and Ramallah. Israel has made about 20,500 arrests during near-daily raids in the occupied West Bank since October 7, 2023, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said. Over 9,000 Palestinians are currently imprisoned in Israeli detention centers.
Israeli settlers torched and defaced a mosque in the Palestinian village in Deir Istiya in the central West Bank overnight. Settlers graffitied messages on the mosque, including “we are not afraid,” “we will revenge again,” and “keep on condemning,” according to the AP. The attack came one day after some Israeli leaders issued rare condemnations of another attack by dozens of settlers in the Palestinian villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf, where four Palestinians were wounded and four Israelis arrested.
Israeli forces were captured in a video published by Quds News Network forcibly sealing and welding shut the main doors of Palestinian homes in the Jaber neighborhood of Hebron
Clashes erupted between local residents and Israeli settlers during an attack on the Bedouin community of Al-Rashaida, east of Bethlehem. A video can be seen here.
Residents of the Nur Shams refugee camp held a rally east of Tulkarem on Wednesday, demanding to return home after more than ten months of forced displacement, with protesters calling the expulsions a crime and insisting on their right to return, the Palestinian Information Center reported.
In its latest update on the West Bank, the United Nations humanitarian agency UN OCHA found:
At least 29 Israeli settler attacks in the West Bank between between November 4 and 10
More than 1,500 Palestinians have been displaced by lack-of-permit demolitions so far in 2025, including about 1,000 in Area C and 500 in East Jerusalem.
Satellite imagery indicates about 1,460 structures were destroyed or severely or moderately damaged in the Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps in the northern West Bank.
Since January 2025, Israeli forces’ operations in three refugee camps in the northern West Bank has generated what has become the longest and largest displacement crisis in the West Bank since 1967. Data verified by UNRWA indicates that at least 31,919 Palestine refugees have been displaced from the Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams refugee camps and surrounding areas as of September 2025.
U.S. News
President Trump signed legislation on Wednesday evening to fund the government through the end of January, ending a 43-day government shutdown—the longest in U.S. history. Trump signed the bill hours after a spending package was approved by the House. Earlier this week, eight Democrats in the Senate joined Republicans to approve the bill, even though it did not include an extension of health care subsidies that had been a key Democratic demand. The shutdown put hundreds of thousands of government workers on furlough, caused thousands of flights to be cancelled, and froze Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for tens of millions of people.
House lawmakers released more than 20,000 pages of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents on Wednesday, revealing his extensive communications with figures in politics, media, business and foreign affairs, including exchanges referencing President Donald Trump. The files show Epstein corresponding with Larry Summers, Michael Wolff, Kathryn Ruemmler, Peter Thiel, Steve Bannon, and others, often discussing Trump, foreign policy, and efforts to manage public fallout from Epstein’s crimes.
Rep. Ro Khanna said Wednesday that newly released Epstein emails show President Donald Trump knew about the abuse and spent hours with one of the victims, arguing that powerful figures “swept it under the rug.” He told Breaking Points that the House obtained the emails only after subpoenaing the Epstein estate and is pressing the Justice Department to release the full files, while warning that Speaker Mike Johnson may try to stall a discharge vote. He says he is planning a bipartisan press conference with survivors next week to keep the issue on the docket.
The White House summoned Representative Lauren Boebert to the Situation Room and leaned on other GOP petition signers as part of a pressure campaign to block further releases of the files on Epstein, according to the New York Times. None withdrew, however, and Speaker Mike Johnson, who had opposed the measure, said he would bring it to a vote next week.
Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva was finally sworn into the House on Wednesday, more than seven weeks after her special election win, ending Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to seat her during the record shutdown and immediately shrinking the GOP majority to 219–214. Democrats had accused Johnson of blocking her installation to prevent her from becoming the pivotal 218th signature on the bipartisan petition forcing a vote to release the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein files, a step she took as her first official act.
The Trump administration is preparing a sweeping overhaul of homelessness policy that would cut permanent housing aid by roughly two-thirds next year, a shift critics warn could force as many as 170,000 disabled, formerly homeless people back onto the streets. A confidential 100-page Department of Housing and Urban Development grant plan is expected to redirect billions toward short-term programs with work rules and treatment mandates, as well as to make explicit federal government support for the police enforcing camping bans, according to the New York Times. If pushed through, it would effectively dismantle the “Housing First” model that has guided federal policy since 2009.
Dozens of congressional Democrats sent letters on Wednesday to 19 Democratic governors urging them to block Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from accessing state driver-data systems, warning that ICE currently enjoys “frictionless, self-service access” to residents’ personal information, according to The Hill. The lawmakers—including Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and Representatives Adriano Espaillat, Sara Jacobs, and Zoe Lofgren—noted that all 50 states and Washington, D.C., have allowed roughly 18,000 law-enforcement agencies to search DMV databases in real time without state oversight for two decades. They pointed to states such as Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts that have already restricted access and pressed others to follow suit.
A new joint report from Human Rights Watch and Cristosal finds that more than 252 Venezuelans expelled to El Salvador under President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation policy were subjected to systematic torture, sexual assault, and prolonged detention without communication inside President Nayib Bukele’s CECOT mega-prison, according to The Guardian. The groups say the Trump administration was fully aware that the deportees—many of them asylum seekers with no criminal record—would face life-threatening abuse. Washington regularly sent officials to visit CECOT, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
International News
The Israeli military bombed a vehicle in the town of Toul in southern Lebanon on Thursday injuring at least one person, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. Israeli airstrikes also hit Lebanon’s Tyre district overnight.
Foreign ministers from the G7 and several invited countries met in Canada on Tuesday and Wednesday amid rising friction with the U.S. over tariffs, defense spending, and uncertainty surrounding President Donald Trump’s Gaza ceasefire plan. Canada’s Foreign Minister Anita Anand said the “peace plan must be upheld,” while U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio focused on Gaza, Ukraine, and broader security issues as divisions persist over NATO’s spending targets and approaches to both the Middle East and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
U.S. Central Command said its forces assisted and enabled more than 22 operations against the Islamic State in Syria, in which five members of the group were killed and 19 captured, according to Reuters. The reported operations took place from October 1 to November 6.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday issued a denunciation of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), accusing the militia of violating ceasefires and committing large-scale atrocities. He remarked on the organization’s reliance on foreign patrons for weapons and financing, and he warned that Washington would pressure the states arming the RSF.
U.S. and Saudi officials are racing to finalize a package of agreements, including a U.S. Security guarantee, ahead of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s White House visit next week. Negotiations intensified after Jared Kushner’s trip to Riyadh over the weekend, according to a report from Axios. The planned Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump, bin Salman’s first since the 2018 Khashoggi killing, comes as both sides discuss a Qatar-style security pledge, a massive Saudi weapons package including F-35s, and steps to revive Israel-Saudi normalization.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—India’s largest far-right Hindu organization—hired Squire Patton Boggs to lobby Congress for the first time in its 100-year history, paying the firm $330,000 in 2025, an investigation by Drop Site contributors Meghnad Bose and Biplob Kumar Das found. Foreign influence experts say the work should be registered under the stricter Foreign Agents Registration Act rather than the Lobbying Disclosure Act, warning that the arrangement obscures who lobbyists meet and what they promote.
A new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report says the agency has been unable to verify Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium since Israel and the U.S. struck major nuclear sites in June, with inspectors still barred from seven targeted locations, including Fordo and Natanz. Iran’s near-weapons-grade stockpile is “a matter of serious concern,” the agency said, and it notes that inspectors will visit Isfahan on Wednesday.
India formally designated this week’s deadly car explosion near Delhi’s 17th-century Red Fort as a terrorist attack, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet saying the “heinous” blast that killed at least 13 people was being investigated under a stringent anti-terrorism law. Kashmir police have since carried out hundreds of raids across the Himalayan region and detained roughly 500 people, while investigators are examining whether seven men arrested in a separate probe, including two doctors, are linked to Pakistan-based groups Jaish-e-Muhammad and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, according to Al Jazeera.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro stated the country was preparing for the prospect of guerrilla warfare as a fallback defense against a potential U.S. invasion, following the arrival of the U.S. aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford near the Caribbean. Maduro urged civilians and militias to prepare for an “insurrectionary general strike”, and citing Vietnam’s “people’s war” model, he said the country should be defended through small, mobile resistance units designed to offset Venezuela’s military weaknesses. Maduro said that the government has begun studying protracted warfare tactics and expanding militia training as tensions rise amid an expanded U.S. naval presence, which Washington says targets narcotics trafficking but which Caracas views as a prelude to escalation.
The Ukrainian military conducted long-range overnight strikes against infrastructure in Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, and inside Russia using a new domestically produced “Flamingo” long-range missile. The operation reportedly hit “several dozen” targets—including oil depots, command posts, air-defense sites, and drone storage areas—according to Ukrainian officials. The Morskoy Neftyanoy Terminal and Kirovske airfield in Crimea were damaged, as well as facilities near Berdyansk in Zaporizhzhia.
More From Drop Site
“Rescue Teams Dig Up Over 50 Bodies Buried in Shallow Graves in Courtyard of Gaza City Clinic”: Civil Defense teams in Gaza dug up over 50 bodies buried in shallow graves in the courtyard of the Sheikh Radwan clinic in Gaza City this week. The bodies were taken to Al-Shifa hospital for the difficult and often unsuccessful work of identifying them. Drop Site contributor Abdel Qader Sabbah reported from the scene, speaking to emergency workers and family members looking for their missing loved ones. Read the full report here.
Ryan Grim on The Majority Report: Grim discussed the effect of mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s election on Republican morale, the right’s Nick Fuentes problem, and the BBC’s lawsuit against Owen Jones for an article he published with Drop Site. You can watch his appearance in full here.
Programming note: You can sign up here to get updates from us on our WhatsApp channel.
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:
Settlers torch mosques, governments block justice—this is what injustice looks like in 2025
Marco Rubio is such a criminal. His phony statements on the RFS in Sudan about those supplying arms ignores that those arms are supplied by the UAE which buys those arms from the USA. He is the worst warhawk to be Sec. of State, just as bad as Hillary Clinton. He won't rest until he bombs Cuba and Venezuela. His lie about being forced to leave Cuba as a refugee when Castro came to power, is disproved by the fact his family left THREE years before the revolution. My question is why do evil people get to run the US and Israel and somehow stay in power. Anyone who supports Israel is a monster.