David Nagar is a man with no identity. He was born a Palestinian 45 years ago, in a West Bank village south of Hebron, under another name that cannot be published, by court order. For the last 30 years, he has been living in Israel, without legal standing, and the authorities and his friends know him by his Israeli name. He was deleted from the Palestinian population registry 12 years ago - but now Israel wants to return him to the Palestinian Authority, where his life will be in danger.

Nagar arrived in Holon 30 years ago, as a Palestinian boy of 14. He was sent to Israel after his father died, to help his mother and siblings. He began tarring roofs, working for a man called Shalom Nagar. As time passed, David became a member of the Nagar household. He stopped visiting his family in the territories, took on the last name of his employers, and has since been known as David Nagar.

"The Nagar family had maybe 10 children," said Nagar. "I stayed with them in the house, and no one knew that I wasn't one of their children. I went with them to synagogue and I prayed. I wanted to be Jewish." In 1986, Nagar began the conversion process and received temporary resident status. He moved in with an Israeli girlfriend, and they had a son in 1991.

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Three years ago, Nagar was convicted of involvement in a drug deal and living in Israel illegally.

"A police agent asked me where it was possible to get grass, so I told him someone's name," said Nagar. He was sentenced to a year in jail, but when the year ended he refused to leave the prison because according to the court ruling, the police were supposed to return him to the Palestinian Authority - which he says would put him in a life-threatening situation.

Nagar has submitted two requests for his case to be reviewed by a committee that deals with Arabs who cooperate with the Shin Bet security services, but his requests were rejected because the committee doesn't recognize him as being in danger.

Nagar says he gave the Shin Bet information about illegal residents and was a police informant. Attorney Efrat Fink from the public defender's office, who represents Nagar, has confirmed that he was a police informant.

Nagar presents a long facial scar as his evidence that he has helped the Shin Bet. "In 1993," he said, "a few Jews, who were paid off by Arabs, kidnapped me at knifepoint. They dragged me to a car and put me into the trunk." The police, who found out about the kidnapping from a neighbor who witnessed it, stopped the vehicle on its way to the territories and rescued Nagar.

Nagar took his request for resident status to the Supreme Court, which ordered that he be appointed a public defender. He got out of jail in February, and an interim injunction prohibits his deportation pending a further decision. Last week a hearing was held on the matter in the inter-ministerial committee for humanitarian issues, which has the power to grant legal status in special cases.

"For 30 years I've been a Jew," said Nagar. "I don't know about the territories."