Palestine says otherwise.
Palestinians are under no illusion that they are not occupied, and before you argue with me on the exact definition of 'state', I will respond to no argument which is predicated solely on semantics: e.g. "there is no such thing as Israel-Palestine".
No it isn’t. Gaza isn’t under Israeli sovereignty by any conception of the word; it is simply blockaded by Israel. The West Bank also isn’t under Israeli sovereignty. Area A is ruled by the Palestinians. Area B (probably) and C is occupied by Israel, but being occupied isn’t the same as being part of the occupying power.
Not only is the Gaza Strip under an indefinite blockade which has decimated its economy, movement within Gazan territory itself is literally restricted by Israeli forces.
The settlements don’t make a Palestinian state impossible at all. Some settlements could be part of Israel in a final peace agreement and others part of Palestine. Or they could all be part of Palestine. Or some could be part of Israel, others part of Palestine, and others evacuated.
What do you think is the purpose of supporting illegal settlement of Palestinian territory if not to assimilate Palestinian territory? There is no other discernible purpose for pursuing this policy. Even the latest proposal for the constitution of a Palestinian state involved creating a Frankenstein state without geographically contiguous borders which even users here argued would constitute nothing but a Bantustan. And you yourself believe that 'some settlements could be part of Israel' — i.e., it's possible that Israel annexes large portions of occupied Palestine which it has systemically assimilated for decades.
“Practically akin” is a pretty vague and meaningless statement.
Not really, and I've given my reasons, you've just ignored them. The entire region is practically under the sovereignty of Israel, whose clear intention is to indefinitely occupy Palestinian territory and keep Palestinians permanently disenfranchised. The arguments that such a situation does not constitute apartheid are typically semantic in nature, or whose implicit logic is: it's not apartheid because apartheid is bad, and this is good.