18 The Independent Commission for Human Rights - ICHR Palestinian territory. In these areas, the Palestinian population is at risk of displacement in favor of settlement expansion. At the same time, Palestinian construction is almost entirely prohibited across large swathes of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, by the Israeli apartheid regime. The Israeli settler colonial project is a pivotal direction of Israeli institutions and actions. In addition to direct practices of the IOF, the colonial project is supported by government policies and decisions, racist court rulings, and colonial laws and regulations. Underscoring this enterprise, the Israeli Knesset continues to propose and enact racist draft laws, which incite violence against Palestinians across the oPt. In this context, a set of draft laws have been introduced with the aim of seizing control over the Palestinian territory and citizens, legalizing settlement outposts constructed on Palestinian privately-owned land, and providing support and protection to Israeli settlers. To this avail, a draft law was put forward, calling for suspending allocations to Palestinian families in the 1948 Palestinian territory, including discontinuance of national and health insurance allowances. Many draft laws have demanded that Israeli settlements be annexed to Israel properly in order to forcibly displace and expel Palestinians from their lands. Of these, a draft law called for imposing “Israeli sovereignty” over the entire occupied West Bank. Another draft law provided for imposing the Israeli law, administration, and “sovereignty” over the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea areas as well as over the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. A draft law prescribed that all actions taken against any settlements and settlement outposts be suspended while their status is settled and established within the framework of the so-called “regularisation process”. In line with the Israeli definition of “terrorism”, a draft law called for revoking the citizenship or residence status of any person, who is convicted of “terrorism”. This bill targets Palestinian resistance activists, who receive social allowances from the Palestinian Authority (PA) or Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Additionally, a draft law imposed severe restrictions on Palestinian political prisoners, so-called “security prisoners”, in Israeli detention facilities. In December 2021, a draft law was also proposed, placing administrative detention, including restrictions on the movement of persons, within the ambit of an ordinary law, rather than emergency regulations that are extended from time to time.1 A draft law was in place, providing for deporting the families of Palestinian political prisoners and martyrs, whom Israel calls “vandals”. In addition to a law on the freezing and deduction of Palestinian clearance revenues, a law was proposed to freeze PA payments to the families of political prisoners and martyrs (Amendment/Confiscation and management of funds). In both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israeli arbitrary policies, IOF attacks, and settler violence against Palestinians resulted in the killing of 362 Palestinians,2 including four shot and killed by Israeli settlers.3 Thousands of others sustained injuries. Targeting Palestinian young people, extra-judicial killing crimes were on the rise after the IOF had modified open fire regulations, introduced additional facility rules, expanded cases where firearms are allowed to be used against Palestinian protestors, and fabricated allegations of attempts of stabbing and ramming attacks on Israeli military and police personnel. Most often, the bodies of extra-judicial killed Palestinians are withheld and burial is denied. Over the past year, the Israeli occupying authorities escalated this policy, particularly after the new coalition government had been formed in Israel. In 2021, the Israeli occupying authorities withheld the bodies of 36 Palestinian martyrs. Of these, nine bodies were released thanks to legal interventions implemented by relevant Palestinian human rights actors. Twenty-seven (27) bodies continued to be withheld in morgues. Setting a new record, 91 bodies of Palestinians were withheld by the end of 2021. The Israeli High Court legalized the withholding of the bodies of Palestinians in order to exchange them with Israeli dead bodies or prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza. Of these, the bodies of four Palestinian children are withheld. Having died in prison after serving 13 of his 19-year sentence, the body of 1 Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies (MADAR). Monitor of Laws and Regulations, 2021. 3 MADAR. 2021: A Year of Escalating Settler Violence. 2 Palestinian Monitoring Group (PMG), Negotiations Affairs Department (NAD). Israeli Violations: January-December 2021. The Situation of Human Rights in Palestine