35-year-old Hanna Kaufman, a Jewish-American attorney, decides to change her life. She leaves France and her husband, Victor Bonnet, and settles in Jerusalem, where she starts working again as an attorney and becomes the lover of Israeli district attorney Joshua Herzog by whom she soon is pregnant.

The Palestinian refugee she is asked to defend in her very first case is Selim whose family estate was confiscated and turned into a tourist attraction outside a Zionist housing community in the occupied territory. Prosecuting attorney is Joshua Herzog at his most condescending and sarcastic. When the trial attracts national and international attention, the prosecution becomes preoccupied with stopping the publicity and preventing the legal precedent the trial affords Palestinians.

Through Selim, with whom she has started an affair, idealistic Hannah learns of the plight of the Palestinian refugees and starts questioning her beliefs.