Hafiz Shawar was born in Hebron on 14 November 1955. He worked as a blacksmith and had a family of 10 members; three sons, six daughters and their mother, as well as several grandchildren. He passed away on 31 December 2017. His family kept many of his archival documents, such as family photographs and documents.

The Hafiz Shawar Collection includes a family archive compiled over different periods, such as some personal photographs of Hafiz Shawar, and documents that vary between birth certificates of family members, financial papers, and others issued by official bodies such as those related to plots of land and passports. In addition, the collection includes an arrest certificate issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2003 when Shawar was detained Hafiz Shawar by the Israeli Occupation Authorities for about a month, and a clipping from an issue of al-Fajr Newspaper published in 1979, in which congratulations on his marriage were mentioned.