Ora, a recently divorced Jerusalemite physiotherapist in her early fifties, had anxiously waited for her son Ofer to get through his three years' term of military service – spent mainly in confronting and skirmishing with the rebellious Palestinians of the Second Intifada. But just as she prepares to mark Ofer's safe return by going off with him to a long-planned week of backpacking in the Galilee, the West Bank situation sharply escalates and the Israeli Army launches an all-out invasion ("Operation Defensive Shield" of April 2002).