The Independent Commission for Human Rights - ICHR 9 Foreword by the Commissioner General Another difficult year, challenging Palestinians’ capacity for patience and perseverance This report marks the end of a year, which closed another difficult chapter in the life of the Palestinian people under the Israeli occupation. The most critical challenge was a deepening lack of prospects for a better tomorrow. No meaningful political process is in sight so as to bring an end to the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their fundamental rights, mainly their rights to an end of the occupation, self-determination, sovereignty over their natural resources, wealth, borders, crossing points, individual and collective destinies, and freedom. The Israeli occupying authorities have continued to pursue policies of forced population transfer and displacement in East Jerusalem and Area C. Israel has escalated policies of home demolitions, evictions, displacement, obstruction, seizure, and destruction of humanitarian initiatives and reconstruction efforts. Israel set a new record in terms of the number of donor-funded humanitarian projects, which it demolished and confiscated. The Israeli occupying forces (IOF) demolished 220 out of 906 buildings and structures funded by the donor community. In a single year during the past two decades, Israel displaced the largest number of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem. More blatantly than ever before, Israel targeted Palestinian civil society institutions and labelled a number of human rights groups and development actors as terrorist organizations. In the aftermath of a large-scale military aggression, Israel has continued to impose a siege on the Gaza Strip and starve the Gaza population. Not only was it disproportionate and indiscriminate, but the Israeli military offensive also targeted residential buildings, commercial premises, towers, media offices, and infrastructure, claiming the lives of a considerable number of civilians, including entire families and a high proportion of children. Still, the Palestinian people have demonstrated remarkable resilience and the permanent capability of creating unexpected surprises and producing unplanned responses. Amid this very bleak picture, one needs to see two threads of hope. Firstly, there is growing international recognition that the definition of apartheid now applies to the Israeli occupation and the State of Israel at large. This definition does not only apply to the crime of racial discrimination, but also to the crime of apartheid, which is characterized as a crime against humanity. Secondly, the United Nations Human Rights Council established a permanent commission of inquiry into the crimes perpetrated by the Israeli occupying authorities against Palestinians. In addition, the International Criminal Court ruled for opening an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed by Israel. At the Palestinian domestic level, we would not start by looking at the half-empty glass so that we are not accused of being gloomy. We will review some promising signs of the other half of the glass which is, regrettably, not full yet. The Palestinian territory witnessed partial local elections, which were held both successfully and peacefully. However, the internal Palestinian political divide has cast a shadow on these elections. The Hamas movement prevented the local elections in the Gaza Strip. The largest Palestinian city in terms of population, Gaza city has not seen any elections over 60 years. Presidential and legislative elections are no longer an object of discussion, further compounding an inheritance dispute and creating a constitutional vacuum that represents a time bomb, which might wreak havoc in Palestinian society. Additionally, 2021 was a year of internal clashes, accompanied by waves of violence from multiple Twenty Seventh Annual Report 2021