Who was Kamal Adwan?

Since international attention is focused on the tragic fate of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, raided and bombed by Israel’s murderous army, and its medical team terrorised, detained and killed, it is instructive to recall the history of the person after whom the facility is named.

Kamal Adwan was one of the top leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) with a distinguished record of armed struggle alongside Yasser Arafat, during the 1950s leading up to the ’70s when he was assassinated by Israel’s notorious Mossad.

Decades before the disastrous era of collaboration which resulted in capitulation known as the Oslo Accords, Adwan was a committed freedom fighter.

As chief of operations for the PLO he was responsible for armed attacks against targets in Israel, and as a founding member of Fatah, Adwan was a top chief of the Black September Organisation.

Interestingly the name “Black September” arose during Jordan’s violent clampdown on the PLO when Palestinians called for the overthrow of Jordan’s monarchy. It began on 16 September 1970, when Jordan’s British-allied monarch King Hussein declared military rule to combat and eliminate the growing power of the PLO-affiliated Fedayeen.

Adwan’s short but distinguished life as an outstanding cadre of Palestine’s freedom struggle, is immortalised across the Occupied Palestinian Territories, having the hospital in north Gaza named after him.

From the archives of the Yasser Arafat Foundation we learn a great deal about the extraordinary contribution of this amazing revolutionary, Adwan was born in 1935, in the village of Barbara near the city of Al-Majdal (renamed Ashkelon by the occupation state). During the Nakba of 1948, his family was displaced to the Gaza Strip. Adwan attended schools in the Gaza Strip and joined the Muslim Brotherhood.

“Following the disagreement between Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood in 1954, Adwan left the Muslim Brotherhood. Believing in the armed fedayee struggle, he sought another path and established an independent cell of 12 young men.”

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“In 1956, Adwan participated in the resistance to the Israeli occupation of Gaza City. He was committed until the end of occupation – after the Tripartite Aggression on Egypt.”

He met Arafat, Khalil Al-Wazir and others in secondary school. They would later become the leaders of Palestinian revolutionary activity. Adwan then went to Egypt to study engineering, which he was forced to abandon as a result of his financial situation and moved to Saudi Arabia to work.

He stayed in contact with Arafat, Al-Wazir and the other founders of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) in Kuwait and went on to establish a Fatah branch in Saudi Arabia and, after moving to Qatar to work, led the Fatah branch there.

In 1964, Adwan was elected a member of the first Palestinian National Council.

“Adwan devoted his time and effort to the revolutionary activity led by Fatah, and returned to Amman, Jordan, in April 1968, to head the PLO Media Office. He established the office as a media agency with a wide-ranging Arab and international network and an independent newspaper.”

He participated in the battles “to defend the Palestinian Revolution in September 1970, as well as in the Jarash-‘Ajlun battles of 1971.”

Adwan left Jordan with the Palestinian Revolution leaders and forces to Syria, and then to Lebanon. He was elected to the Fatah Central Committee at its 3rd Conference in January 1971. Along with running the PLO Media Agency, Adwan was assigned the supervision of the Western Sector (Occupied Territory).

“Adwan was martyred at his home on Fardan Street in Beirut on the 10th of April 1973, during an Israeli Intelligence Agency (Mossad) operation that also killed, extrajudicially, Kamal Nasser and Abu Yousef Al-Najjar. Ehud Barak, who became Prime Minister of Israel in 1999, led the operation”.

As a key figure in Palestine’s decades old resistance against the illegal creation of Israel, Adwan’s history of being rendered a refugee resulting from Zionist war crimes during the 1948 Nakba, parallels the experience of millions of Palestinians.

Adwan’s martyrdom in Beirut reminds us that Israel’s violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, has been an ongoing defiance of international laws.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.