Mubarak Awad

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Mubarak Awad is a Palestinian-American psychologist and advocate of nonviolent resistance. Awad, a Christian, was born in 1943 in Jerusalem when it was under the British Mandate. Mubarak's father was killed in 1948 during the fighting between Jews and Arabs. As his house was left in occupied "no man's land" he became a refugee in the old city of Jerusalem. After graduation from high school Mubarak traveled to the USA to complete higher education. Mr. Awad's activities became very supportive of children's rights around the world, and he helped create programs for troubled and abused children in the USA. He was given the right to Israeli citizenship in 1967, but refused and kept his Palestinian ID and USA citizenship.

In 1985, Awad returned to Palestine on a tourist visa, where he established the Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence. Prior to the first intifada, Awad published papers and lectured on nonviolence as a technique for resisting the Israeli occupation. He wrote that nonviolence could be used as a means of resistance. The Centre also sponsored a number of nonviolent actions during the early months on the first intifada. Among the tactics employed was the planting of olive trees on proposed settlements, asking people not to pay taxes and encouraging people to eat and drink Palestinian products. In the Middle East he is called the Arab Gandhi because he was teaching the power of nonviolence similar to Mahatma Gandhi in India during the British Raj. He believed these tactics could be used to resist the Israeli military occupation. He also drew upon the methodologies of Gene Sharp's trilogy, The Politics of Non-Violence. Using this knowledge and his experience, Awad prepared his own "12-page blueprint for passive resistance in the territories," eventually published in the Journal of Palestine Studies.^[1]

Israel deported Awad in 1988, after refusing to review his tourist visa. He appealed to the Supreme Court against his deportation order but his appeal was rejected. One review of the case found that the court had misused erroneously the precedent on which the rejection was determined.^[2] He returned to the United States, where he founded the organization Nonviolence International, working in more than six countries to promote nonviolent resistance and human rights.

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