AMMAN: Entrepreneurs and protesters have renewed calls for PayPal to start offering services in the Palestinian territories, saying the lack of provision is ‘discriminatory’ and hampers local startups.
The giant US online cash company does not allow anyone with a Palestinian address or bank account to register. Israelis, including settlers in the occupied territories, can easily join.
Ala Alaedine, the CEO of the technology company InterTech in Ramallah, told Arab News the absence of PayPal makes life harder for any startup.
“There are other alternatives, but they are not used globally as much as PayPal. In addition, the lack of e-banking solutions in Palestine makes PayPal more dependable.”
Zahi Khouri, CEO of Palestine’s National Beverage Co. and early-stage startup investor through the Ibtikar Fund, said: “All we want is equal access for our talented young people to bring their innovative products and ideas to the world.”
Under siege in Gaza and facing difficult political and economic situations, some Palestinians have tried to use their talents to create small one-person shops that are largely dependent on the digital economy. Without an easy and efficient pay system, however, they face a major hurdle.
PayPal claims it is not discriminating against Palestinians, although it is available in 203 countries and locations around the world.
Palestinian-American Sam Bahour, CEO of consulting firm Applied Information Management, took up the case with people in Silicon Valley.
He talked to peace activists in the US and encouraged them to do something to change this situation, which he said is hurting young Palestinian entrepreneurs.
“The message (PayPal is) indirectly sending is that they could not care less if these young people spend their time behind a keyboard or in the streets,” he explained.
Khaled Abu Al-Khair, CEO of the gaming startup PinchPoint, explained why PayPal’s entry to Palestine matters for his company: “One of PinchPoint’s best performing games is Al-Mamlaka, and over 60 percent of the players are based in Palestine. Many of them would like to purchase virtual items in the game, but are not comfortable paying through Facebook.
“Allowing these players to pay through PayPal will increase PinchPoint’s revenues from this game significantly.”
Several attempts in 2016 to get PayPal to fix the problem failed. In May this year, activists in the US and Middle East decided to escalate the campaign. On May 16, a demonstration was held outside PayPal’s headquarters in San Jose. Protestors included supporters of Jewish Voice for Peace, the Green Party, and the American Friends Service Committee. They delivered a petition, with 180,000 signatures from around the world, to PayPal executives.
Organizers said PayPal executives were very courteous but noncommittal. They assured the protest representatives that the issue was on the agenda of the company’s board.
Protestors against the policies of PayPal have spoken out against the giant online company. Civic activist Fadi Saba points out that PayPal serves illegal settlements in the occupied territories, but not Palestinians. “The Palestinian unemployment rate is 28 percent due to obstacles placed by the Israeli occupation. If PayPal is interested in a viable peace, it must allow for a viable Palestinian economy, which includes the tech industry that depends on online payment technologies.”
Nassim Nouri, council member of the Green Party of Santa Clara, wondered why PayPal would decide on such a “shameful and discriminatory practice” in the West Bank.
“PayPal is denying economic opportunity to disenfranchised Palestinians, while extending services to their Israeli neighbors. This is not an acceptable corporate practice in San Jose, so it should not be acceptable in the West Bank either,” Nouri said.
Wendy Greenfield, co-chair of South Bay Jewish Voice for Peace, questioned how PayPal would justify perpetuating a situation where its services are only available to a privileged population of Israeli settlers but not the Palestinians they live among. “The best route for PayPal would be to start outlining its plans to rectify this outrageous situation,” she said.
It is not clear what the real reason is behind the exclusion of Palestinians from PayPal’s services.
One organizer told Arab News the problem might stem from the company’s risk-management department. PayPal in 2008 bought the Israeli company Fraud Sciences for a reported $169 million and integrated its fraud-detection technology. Tomer Barel, a former Israeli army intelligence officer, has been the chief enterprise services officer and executive vice president of PayPal Holdings since January 2017.
PayPal declined to comment specifically on that issue when contacted by Arab News.
A spokesman for PayPal said: “PayPal’s ambition is for everyone to have access to our services for digital payments and commerce, in accordance with applicable regulatory requirements. We are in an ongoing dialogue with these organizations because, although we are not currently providing services in the Palestinian territories, we hope ultimately to be able to address the risk, compliance, regulatory and resource allocation issues to properly serve customers in this region and other nations where PayPal is not yet present.
“While we do not have anything to announce for the immediate future, we continuously work to develop strategic partnerships, address business feasibility, regulatory, and compliance needs and requirements, and acquire the necessary local authority permissions for new market entries.”
Criticism mounts over PayPal’s ‘discrimination’ against Palestinians
Criticism mounts over PayPal’s ‘discrimination’ against Palestinians
UN: Two million Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
- The Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011, displaced half of the population internally or abroad
- But Assad’s December 8 ouster at the hands of Islamist forces sparked hopes of return
The Syrian civil war, which erupted in 2011 with Assad’s brutal repression of anti-government protests, displaced half of the population internally or abroad.
But Assad’s December 8 ouster at the hands of Islamist forces sparked hopes of return.
“Over two million Syrian refugees and displaced have returned home since December,” Grandi wrote on X during a visit to neighboring Lebanon, which hosts about 1.5 million Syrian refugees, according to official estimates.
It is “a sign of hope amid rising regional tensions,” he said.
“This proves that we need political solutions – not another wave of instability and displacement.”
After 14 years of war, many returnees face the reality of finding their homes and property badly damaged or destroyed.
But with the recent lifting of Western sanctions on Syria, new authorities hope for international support to launch reconstruction, which the UN estimates could cost more than $400 billion.
Earlier this month, UNHCR estimated that up to 1.5 million Syrians from abroad and two million internally displaced persons may return by the end of 2025.
‘Very bad decision’ if Hezbollah joins Iran-Israel war, says US official
- US special envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack meets Lebanese officials in Beirut as Iran and Israel trade more strikes
- Hezbollah has condemned Israel’s strikes on Iran and expressed full solidarity with its leadership
BEIRUT: A top US official visiting the Lebanese capital on Thursday discouraged Tehran-backed armed group Hezbollah from intervening in the war between Iran and Israel, saying it would be a “very bad decision.”
US special envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack, who also serves as ambassador to Turkiye, met Lebanese officials in Beirut as Iran and Israel traded more strikes in their days-long war and as the US continues to press Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah.
After meeting Lebanon’s Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, a close ally of Hezbollah, Barrack was asked what may happen if Hezbollah joined in the regional conflict.
“I can say on behalf of President (Donald) Trump, which he has been very clear in expressing as has Special Envoy (Steve) Witkoff: that would be a very, very, very bad decision,” Barrack told reporters.
Hezbollah has condemned Israel’s strikes on Iran and expressed full solidarity with its leadership. On Thursday, it said threats against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would have “dire consequences.”
But the group has stopped short of making explicit threats to intervene. After Israel began strikes on Iran last week, a Hezbollah official told Reuters the group would not launch its own attack on Israel in response.
Hezbollah was left badly weakened from last year’s war with Israel, in which the group’s leadership was gutted, thousands of fighters were killed and strongholds in southern Lebanon and near Beirut were severely damaged.
A US-brokered ceasefire deal which ended that war stipulates that the Lebanese government must ensure there are no arms outside state control.
Barrack also met Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Thursday and discussed the state’s monopoly on all arms.
Barrack is a private equity executive who has long advised Trump and chaired his inaugural presidential committee in 2016. He was appointed to his role in Turkiye and, in late May, also assumed the position of special envoy to Syria.
Israel strikes Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, other nuclear sites
- Israeli forces also struck nuclear sites in Bushehr, Isfahan and Natanz, and continue to target additional facilities
DUBAI: Israel has attacked Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, Iranian state television said Thursday.
The report said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” and that the facility had already been evacuated before the attack.
Israel had warned earlier it would attack the facility and urged the public to flee the area. The warning came in a social media post on X. It included a satellite image of the plant in a red circle like other warnings that preceded strikes.
The Israeli military said Thursday’s round of airstrikes targeted Tehran and other areas of Iran, without elaborating. It later said Iran fired a new salvo of missiles at Israel and told the public to take shelter.
A military spokesperson later said Israeli forces struck nuclear sites in Bushehr, Isfahan and Natanz, and continue to target additional facilities. Bushehr is Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, which sits on the Gulf coast.
Israel’s seventh day of airstrikes on Iran came a day after Iran’s supreme leader rejected US calls for surrender and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.” Israel also lifted some restrictions on daily life, suggesting the missile threat from Iran on its territory was easing.
Already, Israel’s campaign has targeted Iran’s enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran and a nuclear site in Isfahan. Its strikes have also killed top generals and nuclear scientists.
A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded. In retaliation, Iran has fired some 400 missiles and hundreds of drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds. Some have hit apartment buildings in central Israel, causing heavy damage.
The Arak heavy water reactor is 250 kilometers southwest of Tehran.
Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to relieve proliferation concerns.
In 2019, Iran started up the heavy water reactor’s secondary circuit, which at the time did not violate Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Britain at the time was helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, stepping in for the US, which had withdrawn from the project after President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from the nuclear deal.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14.
Due to restrictions Iran imposed on inspectors, the IAEA has said it lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.
As part of negotiations around the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to sell off its heavy water to the West to remain in compliance with the accord’s terms. Even the US purchased some 32 tons of heavy water for over $8 million in one deal. That was one issue that drew criticism from opponents to the deal.
Iran confirms meeting European officials on Friday, Iran state media says
DUBAI: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi confirmed on Thursday he would meet his British, French and German counterparts as well as the European Union’s top diplomat on Friday in Geneva, Iranian state media reported.
He said the meeting had come at the request of the three European states.
Iranian official warns US against involvement in Israel-Iran conflict
- Kazem Gharibabadi: Iran has ‘all the necessary options on the table’
DUBAI: Iran’s deputy foreign minister warned against any direct US involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran, saying Iran had “all the necessary options on the table,” in comments reported by Iranian state media on Thursday.
“If the US wants to actively intervene in support of Israel, Iran will have no other option but to use its tools to teach aggressors a lesson and defend itself ... our military decision-makers have all necessary options on the table,” Kazem Gharibabadi said, according to state media.
“Our recommendation to the US is to at least stand by if they do not wish to stop Israel’s aggression,” he said.
