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#PayPal4Palestine

Employees working at the SodaStream factory built deep in Israel's Negev Desert that replaced the West Bank facility when it shut down. September 2, 2015.As a Palestinian-American management
consultant in Ramallah, Palestine, I advise my Palestinian clients
living under Israeli military occupation to use world-class software and
online services, assuring them that it will help them enter global
markets.

Some of these clients are not-for-profit outfits, like the
Palestinian Circus School and Birzeit University; others are tech
start-ups, many of which are funded by US tax dollars via USAID. Time
and again, I regretfully must explain to clients that the most popular
worldwide online payment system, PayPal, is unavailable to them.

As
an American from Youngstown, Ohio, trying to contribute to building a
modern Palestinian economy; and a former software developer who worked
all over the US, I can never offer a satisfactory answer to those who
ask why PayPal refuses to follow the lead of technology giants like
Google, Cisco, HP, Oracle, and many others, that all operate in
Palestine.

Palestine
has a thriving banking sector and all Palestinian banks make money transfers daily to
corresponding US banks. The US
Treasury Department is also active in Palestine and has praised the
level of Palestinian banking compliance. Considering these financial
ties, it is a mystery why PayPal, which is widely considered the most
trustworthy company in its sphere, continues to ignore this market.

While it’s available to users in Israel and to Israeli settlers living
illegally on occupied Palestinian land, PayPal does not extend its
services to Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Many
of these illegal Israeli settlers live literally a few minutes walk
from my home.
This is doubly unfortunate since Palestinians who live in other parts of
the world, and are regular users of PayPal, cannot use the platform to
conduct business with Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel
has continuously placed suffocating limitations on the Palestinian
economy, many which have been directly challenged by successive US
presidents, such as Israel’s refusal to release the needed frequencies
for Palestinians to have 3G services. The internet age has brought with
it a bit of relief from these physical limitations, and the Palestinian
tech sector is a key area of the economy with potential to grow,
especially considering how young the population is.

Palestine produces
roughly 2,000 IT graduates per year who are well-positioned to address the huge gap between
growing demand for online Arabic content and the current lack of
supply. However, only one-third of these graduates find work
in their field. Without access to the needed services that facilitate
the growth of businesses, they fall into the despair of
unemployment and all that it carries with it.

In
order to meet these market needs and generate employment opportunities,
Palestinian startups and entrepreneurs need equal access to services,
like PayPal, for business and charitable services.

In December, the
President of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy (AVPE), Edward
Thompson, and myself, as Chairman of AVPE, wrote to inform PayPal CEO
Daniel Schulman of the company’s shortcomings in Palestine, but our
request for a meeting went unheeded. Now, a group of 40 prominent
Palestinian organizations have penned a public letter asking Mr Schulman to reconsider.

Among
the signatories are the Palestinian Telecommunications Group (Paltel)
the largest private-sector company in Palestine, and one that I assisted
in establishing, the renowned startup incubator Gaza Sky Geeks,
and Palestine’s National Beverage Company, whose CEO Zahi Khouri is an
early stage startup investor through another signatory, the Ibtikar
Fund. These are just a few examples — those in tech, business and
finance have come together from across the span to also make this request. Seemingly small but poignant
indignities like this one block the road towards freedom, justice and
equality for Palestinians, and we hope to methodically clear them from
our path.

In
the letter, we explain that while other payment
portals are available, there is no replacement for the trust and
familiarity that PayPal inspires among potential users, particularly
to those unfamiliar with Palestine-based companies. Without access
to PayPal, Palestinian entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and others face
routine difficulties in receiving payments.

The most disturbing thing about PayPal’s presence in Israel-Palestine is that access to it depends on ethnicity

Perhaps
the most disturbing thing about PayPal’s presence in Israel-Palestine,
however, is that access to it depends on ethnicity. Again, while
Israeli settlers living
in the West Bank are completely integrated into the Israeli system and
have access to PayPal and other technologies, the Palestinians they live
among do not. These are settlements that are considered illegal under
US foreign policy and international law.

In fact, Human Rights Watch released a report earlier this year that stated
that businesses should withdraw from the settlements entirely to end
their complicity in "an inherently unlawful and abusive system that
violates the rights of Palestinians.”
This
is not just about access to PayPal. It is about PayPal’s role in
empowering entrepreneurs, small businesses, and individuals to make a
living and conduct commerce, particularly in parts of the world where
physical barriers and limitations are established by governments. 

We
would be doing ourselves, as Americans and Palestinians, a disservice by
allowing any company to deny their service based on ethnicity,
heritage or because of Israeli pressure to enforce a clear suppression
of the Palestinian economy via the limitations of occupation. 

It
is our sincere hope that our latest attempt to right this wrong will
not fall on deaf ears. For the Palestinian people, breaking free from
Israeli military occupation will mean carving out a meaningful space in the global economy. And we cannot do that without equal
access to indispensable tools like PayPal.