4. Refugee Status Determination: Article 1D Case A 5 K 1072/08 In November 2010, the Administrative Court of Dresden considered a case involving a Palestinian from the West Bank, who was registered with UNWRA. The asylum seeker, his wife and two children lived in a village outside Ramallah. As a result of Israel’s construction of the wall in and around the West Bank, the applicant’s land was confiscated with no compensation. Due to the wall construction and various checkpoints, the family no longer had medical services within reach, and also the applicant was repeatedly late to his job as an insurance broker. Because of his tardiness at work, he was eventually fired. After he was fired, he was unable to pay for his daughter’s school. He could not get a permit to work in Israel because his brother, who was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was in prison. Unable to work and having lost his land, the applicant decided to leave the West Bank in 2007, without his family. In assessing the applicant’s claim, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees found that the alien experienced no persecution while he was in Palestine, and there was no evidence showing he would face a risk of the intensity and duration required to qualify as persecution according to Section 60 (1) of the Residence Act if he were to return. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees dismissed the argument that the Israeli government’s wall construction and other actions that prohibited the applicant from traveling around the West Bank was persecution. It stated that there was no evidence that Israel was acting on the basis of a persecutory ground because of his ethnicity. On appeal, the Administrative Court dismissed this decision and found that because the Israeli authorities would not allow the applicant back into the West Bank (due to his three-year absence), he was the victim of a ban of return and exclusion because of his Palestinian ethnicity, which constitutes persecution according to Section 60 (1) of the Residence Act. The Court found that since Israel was the de facto government in the Palestinian territories it was occupying, the applicant should be treated as subject to persecution from Israel – despite his statelessness. Therefore the Court granted refugee status according to Section 60 (1) of the Residence Act. The Court did not mention Article 1D of the Refugee Convention in its decision. Case A 5 K 3151/10 On 9 March 2011, the Administrative Court of Sigmaringen decided that a member of the Preventive Security Service of Fatah was entitled to recognition as a refugee under Section 60 (1) of the Residence Act because of persecution by Hamas. In this case, it was also relevant that there were no internal flight alternatives in the West Bank or Israel. The plaintiff argued that he worked for the Preventive Security Service of Fatah and assisted in the arrest of persons from Hamas. Hamas attacked his physical person Survey of Protection at the National Level 135