Avoiding main roads and checkpoints we took shepherds' paths and passed through small towns and villages.  We stayed with, and listened to, Palestinian families in their homes and Bedouin in their encampments.  Farmers picking olives shared their coffee with us, bakers in villages brought us fresh flatbread as we passed through.  Tourists, especially Westerners, are almost unknown there now, and we were welcomed everywhere.  

We saw for ourselves the illegal settlements expropriating land and water, bulldozers destroying the countryside to build more, and the Separation Wall doing just that to the inhabitants of the land.  We passed through the village of Duma by the little house randomly firebombed by settlers, killing three of the family of four, and severely burning the only child to survive.  We heard of ancestral farmland and olive groves seized or cut off, houses demolished by  the military at a few hours' notice, restrictions, huge fines, beatings, family members imprisoned for their resistance to this, petty humiliations with queues and papers needed at checkpoints, access to medical care denied, local archaeological sites raided for treasures.