Award-winning Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo joined a petition denouncing the refusal of the online payment platform, PayPal, to provide services to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
“Paypal operates in Israel’s illegal settlements—but is refusing to provide service to Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank, in direct violation of UN guidelines,” the 54-year-old tweeted on Monday.
Mark further urged his followers to “join the international call to Paypal to end its baseless discrimination now.”
He also shared a link to the online petition, organized by a non-profit organization “SumOfUs”, which has so far collected 209,097 signatures.
“It’s clear discrimination – Israelis living in the illegal settlements in the very same locations are allowed to create PayPal accounts, said the non-profit organization “SumOfUs”.
“Palestinians who do online freelance work run into another problem: they can’t get paid,” said the organization.
“Now is the time to join the tens of thousands SumOfUs members who have already signed the petition calling on PayPal to stop discriminating against Palestinians,” the petition declares.
While Palestinians can use other means to receive money from abroad – Apple Pay is available locally, and Palestinian banks are part of SWIFT, the global cross-border payment system – PayPal is the world leader in e-commerce payment processing.
