Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Walid Hussein Al-Awad was born in the Al-Bass refugee camp near Tyre, Lebanon, on June 16, 1962, to a Palestinian refugee family originally from the depopulated village of Najmat Al-Subh in the occupied Safed district. He is married and has three daughters and two sons. He completed his primary and secondary education in UNRWA schools in Lebanon, enrolled at the Institute of Social Sciences in the Soviet Union in 1986, and earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Al-Azhar University in Gaza in 2001. He served as Director-General of the Refugee Affairs Department of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the Gaza Strip and became the political advisor to the Palestinian National Council from 2002 until his retirement in 2022.
Al-Awad joined the ranks of the Palestinian revolution as a volunteer during the Tel al-Zaatar massacre in the 1970s, and joined the Palestinian Communist Party in 1979. He was an officer in the Palestine Liberation Army in Lebanon between (1982-1996), and participated in the battles fought by the Palestinians in Lebanon during that period. He headed the Popular Committee in the Ain al-Hilweh camp in 1989, and was chosen as a member of the National Council for the camps of Lebanon in 1991. He was the head of the Palestinian Communist Party organization in Lebanon between (1991-1996), and was elected as a member of the Central Committee and Political Bureau of the Palestinian People’s Party in 2008. He became the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Mu’in Bseiso Foundation (under establishment), the Chairman of the Refugee Committee in the Palestinian National Council, and a member of the Board of Trustees of Al-Azhar University.
Al-Awad writes political articles in newspapers, magazines and websites, and is hosted in the media to comment on developments in the Palestinian issue.
He believes that the conflict with the occupation is open-ended, and he believes that recent events have shown that the Palestinian people have not surrendered, have not knelt, and will not surrender. They are fully prepared to engage in an open confrontation with the occupation to restore their rights and achieve their desired hopes, and that their steadfastness on the ground and their preservation of unity will contribute to preserving the unified entity of the people and confronting the occupation with all available means.
He believes that the Oslo Accords opened the door to the formation of the Palestinian entity, but the Palestinian leadership was unable to reach the desired end of the Oslo path, which is the establishment of the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. The agreement is ambiguous; it either opens the way to independence, or it leads to the perpetuation and continuation of the occupation, and this is what happened. He considers the division to be a conspiracy against the Palestinian people and cause, in which several factors contributed, the most important of which are regional and international factors. However, the Palestinians continued with this division, which constituted a death knell for the entire Palestinian situation. In Al-Awad’s opinion, its continuation is due to illusions and ambitions of governance and the struggle over it. He believes in resistance in all available and possible forms, and believes that the most effective type of resistance is popular resistance because of its great impact in confronting the occupation, without this negating the right of the Palestinian people to practice other forms, including armed struggle. He believes that the Palestinian people must preserve the achievements they have made, while demanding that international legitimacy achieve what it has approved, especially the independent Palestinian state on the borders of June 4, 1967, and the full return of refugees to their homes from which they were displaced. This right is sacred and cannot be relinquished.
He believes that the PLO represents the home of all the Palestinian people, therefore efforts should be focused on rebuilding it, not dismantling it. He advocates strengthening national partnership and ensuring the unconditional participation of all factions under its umbrella, arguing that the PLO was built on blood and suffering, and its destruction would strip it of its legitimacy as the representative of the Palestinian people, especially after the world recognized it as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. He believes that the Palestinian political system is theoretically just, but there is a gap between the written word and the reality on the ground, and the ability to implement the people's will. Furthermore, he believes that living under occupation necessitates that the Palestinian people focus on the struggle for national liberation. He argues that what happened in the Arab world was not an Arab Spring, even though the demands raised were just, because the path to achieving them was not. He believes that what occurred was part of an American plan to replace authoritarian regimes and to engage with political Islam as an alternative to the old systems of tyranny. However, he asserts that political Islam has proven incapable of providing solutions for societies and has instead plunged Arab countries into the quagmire of sectarian warfare.
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