Migrate to Java 16 and Gradle 7

[karim-elngr]

It is currently not possible to use the repo with Java 16 or above ( 17 the new LTS ) due to the current Gradle version
distributionUrl=https\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-6.9-bin.zip
and as per https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/compatibility.html Java 17 is not yet supported but Java 16 requires Gradle version 7 which contains some breaking changes such as https://docs.gradle.org/current/userguide/upgrading_version_6.html#sec:configuration_removal

Java 17 is the new LTS and is expected to become the baseline for Spring framework 6 https://spring.io/blog/2021/09/02/a-java-17-and-jakarta-ee-9-baseline-for-spring-framework-6

Can we migrate to Gradle 7 and Java 16 until Java 17 is officially supported by Gradle?