[1][2] Awad, who was born in Jerusalem in 1943, returned to the city on a tourist visa in 1983 to establish the nonviolence centre.
[4] Awad was part of a group of twenty Palestinian intellectuals who advocated nonviolent tactics of intifada and wrote leaflets calling for sit-down strikes local production of food and wrote a long article containing 120 ways nonviolence ways to resist Israelis.
A preparation meeting for opening the center was held in 1984 in which Awad, human rights lawyer Jonathan Kuttab and American nonviolence strategist Gene Sharp took part.
[3] Awad claimed, with strong support from U.S. consular officials, that under international conventions Israel did not have the right to expel him from his place of birth and he refused to leave.
[3] The court ruled that he had forfeited his right to residence status in Israel when he became a U.S. citizen and he was deported in June 1988.