The film is set in the tense period in the Israel-Palestinian peace process shortly after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, with the strained relations implied but not explicitly depicted. It is divided into two major sections, all loosely tied together as the story of Suleiman's return to the West Bank and Israel. The character of Suleiman in the film is described only as 'E.S.' E.S. returns from a twelve-year exile in New York City and is now in unfamiliar territory.Within the film, no real plot or character development emerges. A series of mostly unconnected scenes take place one after the other in documentary film like fashion. The gradual accumulation of images and dialogue start without conclusion presenting an unsettling kind of feeling, which was meant to convey the quality of life led by Palestinians given their statelessness.
The first, and lightest, section is the "Nazareth Personal Diary", featuring warm observations of his family and his relatives' lives. Some of the notable vignettes include the dull yet comedic routines of the proprietor of a souvenir shop called "the Holyland" in which he fills bottles of alleged holy water from his own tap and fails to keep a cheap camel statuette from falling over on his shelves. E.S. and the shop owner spend time sitting in front of the stop waiting futilely for tourists to stop by. A boat full of Arab men fish, as one of the men bashes various Palestinian families that his friend does not belong to while praising the one that his friend does belong to. Suleiman also interviews a Russian Orthodox cleric who rails against the tourists polluting the Sea of Galilee.
A short middle segment shows E.S. getting up to speak at a conference on Palestinian film making; the microphone immediately begins feeding back and he leaves the podium. The last section, "Jerusalem Political Diary, has a quicker narrative pace and a more overtly ideological message. Absurd humor is evoked alongside feelings of anti-Israeli paranoia in the characters; for example, what first appears to be a terrorist's hand grenade held by a Palestinian turns out to be a cigarette lighter.
Suleiman discovers an Israeli policeman's walkie-talkie, and he then meets up with a single young Arab woman who is engaging in a search for an apartment that is just as fruitless as the two men's search for tourists. The woman, who speaks fluent Hebrew, is told by Jewish landlords that they do not rent to Arabs, while an Arab landlord tells her to live at home in accordance to Islamic tradition. She uses the walkie-talkie to play various pranks on the Israeli police, at one point singing an overly malevolent version of Israel's national anthem over the air. In the last part of the film, the woman stages a piece in which the police unwittingly participate as a member of a guerrilla theatre group. The end comes after a long shot of Suliman's parents sleeping, with all the lights off and Israeli material playing on their television.Source: Wikipedia