battle fronts or the threat of other forms of harassment, violence or exploitation, preventing the applicant from being able to return safely. Up-todate information on the realistic prospect of being able to re-avail oneself of the protection or assistance is required. The feasibility of (re)availment cannot be assessed in the abstract. j. Although Article 1D focuses on the cessation of the protection or assistance of UNRWA, the situation in the State in whose jurisdiction UNRWA is operating will not only be relevant, but may be determinative of the need for 1951 Convention protection. For example, the host State or authorities – not UNRWA – will control whether a Palestinian refugee will be permitted to (re)enter their territory and (re)establish him/herself there, including whether he or she is able to obtain the necessary legal documentation establishing a right to stay in the State or territory. 50 The risk facing the applicant may emanate, for example, from the authorities directly. These assessments are to be based on reliable and up-to-date information, and special care needs to be exercised where the situation is fluid or unclear. k. No State can safely assume that a Palestinian refugee will be able to access the protection or assistance of UNRWA in an area of operation where they have never resided, or other than that in which he or she was formerly residing. As such decision-makers should not assess the lawfulness of return in relation to an UNRWA area of operation to which the individual has no previous connection. That would impose unreasonable and insurmountable obstacles on applicants, and ignore the general workings of the State-based system of international relations and State sovereignty. Moreover, consistent with general principles of international refugee law, the assessment as to whether the protection or assistance of UNRWA has ceased for a person previously resident in an UNRWA area is to be made vis-à-vis the UNRWA area of operation where the applicant was previously residing.51 The assessment is not to be made against each of UNRWA’s areas of operation but to a single UNRWA area of operation.52 23. The circumstances listed above are alternative, not conjunctive, such that depending on the case at hand, one or more of the aforementioned circumstances may be present, bringing the applicant within the scope of Article 1D(2).53 The evidentiary 50 For example, in relation to the West Bank, the position of the Israeli authorities will be determinative. Likewise, for passage across the border to Gaza from Egypt, permission from Egypt is likely to be required, noting that at some times, the border is closed. 51 See also, El Kott, note 9 above, para. 77: “… the person concerned ceases to be a refugee if he is able to return to the UNRWA area of operations in which he was formerly habitually resident because the circumstances which led to that person qualifying as a refugee no longer exist”. 52 This is supported by the language of the CJEU in El Kott which repeatedly uses the expression “area of operation” in the singular when referring to the scope of the assessment to be carried out. El Kott, note 9 above, paras 49, 50, 55, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65. 53 While the inclusionary aspects of Article 1D(2) will be established where an applicant has been forced to leave UNRWA’s area of operation where his/her personal safety is at serious risk and if it is impossible for UNRWA to guarantee his/her living conditions in accordance with that organization’s mission, the applicant is not required to establish both. In El Kott, (note 9 above), the CJEU accepted in the context of the facts before it, that such circumstances “will” fall within the second paragraph of Article 1D (para. 65). The CJEU did not however exhaust other circumstances in which such protection or assistance would be considered to have ceased, as this will depend on the case at hand. An interpretation that 12