Syrians are hoping sanctions relief will help boost investment, reconstruction after more than a decade of civil war.

Business owners in Syria have welcomed the European Union’s decision this week to lift sanctions on the country, in what observers say is the most significant easing of Western pressure on Damascus in more than a decade.

The EU’s move, which followed a similar announcement by the United States in mid-May, was praised by Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani as one that would bolster Syria’s security and stability.

For many Syrian entrepreneurs, it also brings the hope of rebuilding their livelihoods after years of economic isolation.

“Companies that were ousted from Syria and stopped dealing with us because of the sanctions are now in contact with us,” Hassan Bandakji, a local business owner, told Al Jazeera.

“Many companies and producers are telling us they are coming back and that they want to reserve a spot in our market.”

The EU and US sanctions had levied wide-ranging sanctions against the government of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was removed from power in a rebel offensive in December of last year.

The economic curbs had severely limited trade, investment, and financial transactions in Syria, cutting businesses off from supplies and international banking.

“The main obstacle we faced was getting raw materials and automated lines,” said Ali Sheikh Kweider, who manages a factory in the countryside of the Syrian capital, Damascus.

“As for bank accounts, we weren’t able to send or receive any transactions,” Kweider told Al Jazeera.

Syria’s new government, led by ex-rebel leader and interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, had called for the sanctions to be lifted as it seeks to rebuild the country.

US President Donald Trump said after a meeting with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia last week that he planned to order the lifting of American sanctions on Syria.

Reporting from Damascus, Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed said the government is hoping the sanctions relief will help Syria reintegrate into the international community.

It also views the EU’s announcement as additional “recognition of the new political leadership” in the country, Abdelwahed added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has often tried to paint himself as a close friend of United States President Donald Trump, but the relationship has rarely been as straightforward as the Israeli premier has portrayed it.

And recently, speculation across the Israeli media that the relationship between the two leaders, and by extension, their countries, has begun to unravel is becoming unavoidable.

Some idea of the gap was apparent in Trump’s recent Middle East trip, which saw him visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates but not Israel, the state that has typically been the US’s closest ally within the region.

Likewise, US negotiations with two of Israel’s fiercest regional opponents, Iran and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, have been taking place without any apparent input from Israel, a country that has always regarded itself as central to such matters. Lastly, against a growing chorus of international condemnation over Israel’s actions in Gaza, there was the decision of US Vice President JD Vance to cancel a planned visit to Israel for apparently “logistical” reasons.

Appearing on national television earlier this month, Israeli commentator Dana Fahn Luzon put it succinctly: “Trump is signalling to Netanyahu, ‘Honey, I’ve had enough of you.’”

“We’re seeing a total breakdown of everything that might be of benefit to Israel,” Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster and former political aide to several senior Israeli political figures, including Netanyahu, told Al Jazeera. “America was once our closest ally; now we don’t seem to have a seat at the table. This should be of concern to every single Israeli.”

‘Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for this,” Barak continued. “He always presented Trump as somehow being in his pocket, and it’s pretty clear Trump didn’t like that. Netanyahu crossed a line.”

‘No better friend’

While concern over a potential rift may be growing within Israel, prominent voices in the US administration are stressing the strength of their alliance.

Last Sunday, President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said that, while the US was keen to avert what he called a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, he didn’t think there was “any daylight between President Trump’s position and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s position”.

Also doubling down on the US’s commitment to Israel was White House National Security Council spokesperson James Hewitt, who dismissed reports that the Trump administration was preparing to “abandon” Israel if it continues with its war on Gaza, telling Israeli media that “Israel has had no better friend in its history than President Trump”.

The Trump administration has also been active in shutting down criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza in public spheres and specifically on US college campuses.

Several international students have also been arrested and deported for their support of Palestine, including Rumeysa Ozturk, whose arrest as she was walking on a street in a Boston suburb for an opinion piece co-authored in a student newspaper was described by Human Rights Watch as “chilling”.

Spatting

Those policies have made it clear that the Trump administration sits firmly in Israel’s corner. And looking back at Trump’s policies in his first presidential term, that is not surprising.

Trump fulfilled many of the Israeli right’s dreams in that term, between 2017 and 2021, including recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, despite its eastern half being occupied Palestinian territory, recognising the annexation of the Golan Heights, despite it being occupied Syrian territory, and pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.

But those actions are partly to blame for the bumpy relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, with the US president reportedly resentful of what he saw as a lack of gratitude for those pro-Israel policies.

Trump was also furious after Netanyahu congratulated former US President Joe Biden following his 2020 election victory over Trump, which the current president still disputes.

“The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi [Benjamin] Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. … Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake,” Trump said in an interview in 2021.

Nevertheless, in the build-up to the 2024 US election, Netanyahu and his allies actively courted candidate Trump, believing him to be the best means of fulfilling their agenda and continuing their war on Gaza, analysts said.

“Netanyahu had really campaigned for Trump before the election, emphasising how bad Biden was,” Yossi Mekelberg, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, said.

“Now they don’t know which way Trump’s going to go because he’s so contractual. He’s all about the win,” Mekelberg added, referring to the series of victories the president claimed during his recent Gulf tour, adding, “but there’s no win in Palestine”.

Across the Israeli press and media, a consensus is taking hold that Trump has simply tired of trying to secure a “win” or an end to the war on Gaza that Netanyahu and his allies on the Israeli hard right have no interest in pursuing.

Israeli Army Radio has even carried reports that Trump has blocked direct contact from Netanyahu over concerns that the Israeli prime minister may be trying to manipulate him.

Quoting an unnamed Israeli official, Yanir Cozin, a reporter with Israeli Army Radio, wrote on X: “There’s nothing Trump hates more than being portrayed as a sucker and someone being played, so he decided to cut off contact.”

“There’s a sense in Israel that Trump’s turned on Netanyahu,” political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said from Tel Aviv. “Supporters of Netanyahu are panicking, as they all previously thought that Trump’s backing was unlimited.”

What now?

A break in relations between Netanyahu and Trump might not mean an automatic break between Israel and the US, Flaschenberg cautioned, with all factions across the Israeli political spectrum speculating on what the future may hold under a realigned relationship with the US.

US financial, military and diplomatic support for Israel has been a bedrock of both countries’ foreign policy for decades, Mekelberg said. Moreover, whatever Trump’s current misgivings about his relationship with Netanyahu, support for Israel, while diminishing, remains hardwired into much of his Republican base, analysts and polls have noted, and particularly among Republican – and Democratic – donors.

“Those opposed to Netanyahu and the war are hoping that the US may now apply a lasting ceasefire,” Flaschenberg said, with reference to Israeli reliance upon US patronage. “That’s not because of any great faith in Trump, but more the extent of their dismay in the current government.”

However, equally present are those on the hard right, such as Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who Mekelberg speculated may also hope to take advantage of whatever direction US policy towards Israel heads in.

“Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and their backers could take advantage of American disinterest, depending upon what shape it takes,” Mekelberg told Al Jazeera. “If the US continues to provide weapons and diplomatic cover in the UN while letting [Israel] get on with it, then that’s their dream,” he said of Smotrich, who has reassured his backers that allowing minimal aid into the besieged enclave did not mean that Israel would stop “destroying everything that’s left of the Gaza Strip”.

However, where Netanyahu may figure in this is uncertain.

Accusations that the Israeli prime minister has become reliant upon the war to sustain the political coalition he needs to remain in office and avoid both a legal reckoning in his corruption trial, as well as a political reckoning over his government’s failures ahead of the October 7, 2023 attack, are both widespread and longstanding.

“I don’t know if Netanyahu can come back from this,” Barak said, still uncertain about whether the prime minister can demonstrate his survival skills once again. “There’s a lot of talk about Netanyahu being at the end of his line. I don’t know. They’ve been saying that for years, and he’s still here. They were saying that when I was his aide, but I can’t see any more magic tricks that are available to him.”

Majed Abu Ramadan says 29 Palestinian children, elderly people killed as hunger grips bombarded enclave.

At least 29 children and elderly people have died from “starvation-related” deaths in the Gaza Strip in recent days, the Palestinian health minister says, warning that thousands more are at risk as limited aid begins trickling into the bombarded enclave.

Majed Abu Ramadan told reporters on Thursday that earlier comments by the United Nations aid chief to the BBC that 14,000 babies could die without desperately needed food aid were “very realistic”, but could be an underestimation.

Israel has allowed limited deliveries of humanitarian aid into Gaza amid a wave of international condemnation of its 11-week total blockade on the territory, which spurred warnings of mass famine.

But UN officials have said the humanitarian aid entering Gaza is “nowhere near enough” to meet the needs of the population in the war-torn enclave.

About 90 aid trucks entered Gaza on Thursday, but Abu Ramadan said “very few shipments went inside Gaza”. The aid that was allowed in was limited to “flour for bakeries”, he added.

The president of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), Younis al-Khatib, also said Palestinians have yet to receive any supplies so far. “No civilian has received anything yet,” al-Khatib told reporters.

He said most of the aid trucks are still at the Karem Abu Salem crossing, known as Kerem Shalom to Israelis, in southern Gaza.

As limited deliveries enter the Strip, the Israeli military has continued to launch attacks across the enclave, with medical sources telling Al Jazeera that at least 51 Palestinians have been killed since dawn on Thursday.

At least 53,655 Palestinians have been killed and more than 121,000 others injured since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said that while Palestinians have welcomed the influx of aid, it is a “drop in the ocean” compared with the population’s needs.

“Five hundred aid trucks are needed on a daily basis in order to avert the current food crisis in the territory,” Abu Azzoum explained.

Still, Gaza resident Ahmed Abed al-Daym said the aid trucks were a “positive sign” amid dire conditions.

“Our homes are empty – there is no bread, and our children are going hungry,” he told Al Jazeera.

“In many households, bread has completely disappeared. What people urgently need is a steady and sufficient flow of flour and other essentials. Unfortunately, the limited aid that has entered so far falls far short of meeting our needs.”

Another resident, Reem Zidiah, said that due to the mass starvation that Gaza is enduring, no one is safe in the besieged enclave.

“All of us here in Gaza, we don’t think about tomorrow because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow – whether we’re going to live or die,” Zidiah told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee announced new forced evacuation orders for Palestinians in Jabalia and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.

He said in a post on X that the army will “significantly expand its military activity” in the area.