Ziad Abu Ein

Ziad Abu Ein, also spelled Ziad Abu Ain, (; 22 November 1959 – 10 December 2014) was a Palestinian politician. He was a member of the Fatah political party, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and a senior minister in the Palestinian Authority.

He spent years in prison in Israel after being convicted of multiple murders and being sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released in a prisoner exchange deal. He died following an altercation with Israeli soldiers during a Palestinian protest in Turmus Ayya. The circumstances leading to his death are disputed.

Political life Abu Ein was a member of Fatah and a senior Palestinian official. Before the outbreak of the first intifada, Abu Ein appeared regularly on Israeli television talk shows to discuss politics and was involved in direct talks with Israeli officials on a project that would result in a strategic solution with Israel in the absence of a Palestinian state.

From 2003 to 2012, he served as deputy Minister for Prisoners' Affairs in the Palestinian Authority.

As of September 2014, he was also Minister of Wall and Settlement Affairs without portfolio in the Palestinian Unity Government of June 2014, involved in coordinating and planning non-violent activities on confiscated land or land designated to be expropriated by the Israeli government.

Arrests and detentions Abu Ein spent more than a decade behind bars over a series of arrests. He first became a prisoner in 1977 in Israel at 18.

He was sentenced to life in prison. As part of a prisoner exchange deal in 1983 he was released, but immediately re-arrested at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, where he was to be deported to Algeria via Egypt. The International Committee of the Red Cross strongly condemned the action, and the Human Rights Council in Geneva passed a resolution that called for Abu Ein's immediate release, with only the US and Israel opposing.

In 1985, he was released as a result of another prisoner deal exchange, the Jibril Agreement, to be arrested for the third time under administrative detention a few months later. During the second intifada, in 2002, Abu Ein was arrested and subjected to administrative detention.

There is video of Abu Ein engaged in a heated altercation with Israeli soldiers, at one point being grabbed around the neck by one. Video from shortly afterward shows Abu Ein sitting down and holding his chest, before falling unconscious and being treated by an Israeli medic. He is then shown being rapidly carried away by Palestinians on the scene. Roy Sharon, an Israeli journalist who was present, stated that Abu Ein was never struck in the chest with a rifle butt.