7 Not just a foreword As we present the 2022 Annual Report on the Status of Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, it can be argued that there has been no improvement in the fertile breeding ground for human rights violations. We have experienced unprecedented escalation in Israel’s measures and policies. Based on the mandate of the Independent Commission of Human Rights (ICHR), while this report monitors the situation within Palestine, the Palestinian context is significantly impacted by Israeli actions. Israel’s violence reflects on many aspects of the Palestinian internal situation and adds to anger, resentment, and sometimes despair that take a common form of internal violence. Compared to 151 in 2021, unnatural deaths surged to 196 in 2022. Including extra-judicial killings, murders perpetrated by the Israeli occupying forces (IOF) also increased, particularly in the West Bank. In comparison to an annual average of 45 killings over the past five years (2017-2021), 159 murders were reported in 2022. As many as 953 structures were demolished in Jerusalem and Area C compared to a yearly average of 651 in the last five years. Racist crimes committed by Israeli colonisers also saw a dramatic rise, highlighting the occupying Power’s failure to provide protection to civilians, complicity in abuses, and protection of assailants. This poses a challenge to Palestinian security and police forces, which fail to provide protection to Palestinians. As a result, the credibility and role of these forces are compromised, contributing to security instability that put civil life at risk. Israel, the occupying Power, continued to withhold significant amounts of Palestinian clearance revenues, undermining the ability of the State of Palestine to meet its commitments. The State of Palestine could not pay public servants or service providers, including hospitals, medicines, and medical supplies. Israel continued to impose a blockade on, and strangle the Palestinian population, in the Gaza Strip. With Israeli offensives turning into an almost regular, annual incidence, Israel obstructs the already inadequate rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes. Domestically, despite all this pressure, the internal Palestinian political divide continued to be in place between the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Of note, numerous patterns of violations affecting citizens in both areas arise from, and are associated with, the political divide. Based on political affiliation, this involves discrimination in employment, particularly senior positions, service provision, and reconstruction of homes destroyed in successive Israeli wars on the Gaza Strip. Many families continue to be displaced since the 2014 aggression and subsequent offensives, which have been waged on a nearly annual basis. While declining in a certain field and improving in another, human rights abuses Executive Summary 2022