Kamal Adwan was born in 1935, in the village of Barbara near the city of Ashqelon. 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.
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.
At secondary school, Adwan met Yasser Arafat, Khalil Al-Wazir and others, who would later become the leaders of Palestinian revolutionary activity. Adwan then went to Egypt to study petroleum engineering. However, due to his difficult financial situation, he was forced to abandon higher education after two years, and left for Saudi Arabia to work in the petroleum sector.
Adwan was in contact with Arafat, Al-Wazir, and the other founders of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah) in Kuwait. He established a Fatah branch office in Saudi Arabia and, after moving to Qatar to work in the petroleum sector, 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.
Adwan 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.
