Even the small area of historic Palestine that's now controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA)--the ministate apparatus led by Yasser Arafat that was created under Oslo--is broken into numerous bantustans. The West Bank alone is divided into 64 subregions--with border points controlled by heavily armed Israeli security guards.

During our visit, one family outside the Palestinian town of Ramallah in the West Bank had the second floor of its home seized by the Israeli army--for "security" reasons.

Despite all the talk about peace, Israeli settlements continue to expand rapidly in areas that are supposed to come under PA control. The number of settlements has doubled since Oslo, and there are now around 200,000 settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, and another 200,000 in Jerusalem.

These settlements tell an important story about the conflict. One that we drove by, Ariel, has a university with 6,500 students, a modern sports complex and high-speed Internet access. Ariel's lush lawns are kept green with water taken from Palestinian lands, and the university at Ariel "is holding fast to...a master plan that calls for 20,000 students by the year 2020," the Jerusalem Post reports.

Meanwhile, Palestinians living nearby endure terrible poverty. They also face harassment and routine violence from zealots in the settler movement who seek to drive even more Palestinians from their land.

Olive groves, a staple of the Palestinian economy, are routinely burned down by Israelis--or systematically uprooted by the army as one of its many forms of collective punishment.

The Israeli settlers have a license to kill. Ahmed Hofash lost his son Amin last year to a settler who deliberately drove his car off the road and aimed toward 7-year-old Amin and his older brother. Amin's body was thrown 25 yards through the air.

No one from the Israeli Defense Forces even came to investigate the murder. "Nobody cared," Ahmed told us. "Nobody asked what happened. If a Palestinian throws a stone at a settler's car, they close our village. But nothing is done to Israeli soldiers and settlers."

Most of Israel's settlements are connected by Israeli-only bypass roads--modern highways that cut through Palestinian territory. In contrast, the roads that Palestinians are allowed on are a maze of "security checkpoints," where Israeli soldiers disrupt and dominate the lives of every Palestinian who passes them.

One day during our visit, two Palestinians--a woman giving birth and a man having a heart attack--died while being held at Israeli checkpoints. Other Palestinian roads have simply been blocked off by the Israeli army with piles of concrete.

"Hundreds of roads were demolished," explains Tayseer Arouri, a physics professor at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. "People living in the western part of Ramallah used to have access directly to Ramallah in 20 minutes. Now they have to follow a road which goes five or six times longer, with many checkpoints. They need a minimum of two hours to come from Ramallah, sometimes more."

This spring, students at Bir Zeit found their way to school blocked one day when the military shut down the access roads. Students, faculty and staff had to walk through two security checkpoints to get to the campus.

Since the beginning of the second Intifada last fall, Israel has sealed its borders to Palestinians--and replaced Palestinian workers who traveled each day from the Occupied Territories with virtual slaves brought in from Thailand and other poor countries. The result of this economic strangulation is that the Occupied Territories are literally under a state of siege.

Palestinians that we met universally said that their living conditions have declined steadily since the Oslo accords were signed. Unemployment has skyrocketed. In Gaza, joblessness is estimated at 50 to 70 percent. Lives have been torn apart.

But everywhere we went in Palestine, people were clear: They won't give up their struggle for freedom and justice.

Some day, people will look back on the U.S. government's political, military and economic backing of Israel with the same disgust that they feel when they look back on its support for apartheid in South Africa. We have to work to make sure that day is soon.

List of stories from SW's eyewitness report from Palestine