Rights groups and Palestinian tech firms are urging PayPal to extend its electronic cash transfer service to occupied Palestine.
Several
pro-Palestinian rights groups and Palestinian tech firms sent a letter
this week to the president of PayPal, the U.S.-based online payment
service, urging the company to allow Palestinians in the occupied West
Bank and Gaza access to the service just as it grants access for
Israelis and Jewish settlers living in illegal settlements across the
West Bank.
RELATED:The letter argues that the tech sector in Palestine is one of few that has the potential “to grow under status quo conditions of the Israeli occupation which severely restricts the internal and cross-border movement of goods and people.”
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However, the letter warns, “PayPal’s absence is a major obstacle” to the tech sector’s growth because without access to PayPal.
Speaking to teleSUR on Wednesday, Ehsaneh Sadr, director of the Strategic Partnerships at Palestinian Business Committee for Peace and Reform, stressed the importance of the tech industry in Palestine, highlighting one business in blockaded Gaza.
“Let me give the example of Mohammad al-Madhoun who started a very successful gaming studio, Baskalet, from which over 200,000 games have been downloaded thus far,” Sadr said in an email.
“Mohammad is missing out on revenue because he is unable to use PayPal as an option for in-game purchases and he also has to use the traditional banking system with all its fees to transfer and collect income from in-game advertisement."
The letter also argues that PayPal has an ethical responsibility to expand its services in the context of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“PayPal’s decision to launch its service in Israel for Israeli bank customers means that it inadvertently made its services freely available to Jewish settlers living illegally in the occupied West Bank,” the letter says.
“Palestinians living in close proximity to those settlers do not, however, have access as PayPal doesn’t work with Palestinian banks and Palestinians are unable to establish Israeli bank accounts.”
RELATED:While PayPal has yet to provide a reason for blocking Palestinians from using their services, the answer might be at the very office they have in Israel.
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Sadr pointed to a recent article by Haaretz which revealed that PayPal's risk assessment office, which advises the company about going into new markets, is managed from its Tel Aviv development center.
This office is made up of “100 Israelis, mostly veterans of the Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence corps," according to a 2014 report in the Israeli paper Haaretz on PayPal’s fight against several alleged fraud cases.
Sadr said the article showed that “the people who are deciding whether Palestinian clients and transactions are 'risky' are the same men and women that once held them directly under their military control.”
For that reason, “PayPal might want to get an additional opinion on the potential benefits of expanding service to Palestinians,” she added.
The letter also highlighted PayPal’s stance for equal rights in North Carolina when it cancelled plans to open a global operations center there and invest US$3.6 million after the state passed a controversial law targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens.
Such a stance would show that PayPal “would agree that people living in the same neighborhood ought to have equal rights and access to its services regardless of religion or ethnicity,” the letter said.
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