[2] The plot revolves around the personal stories of a number of soldiers who are on their way to defend a strategic hill overlooking the road to Jerusalem.

In 1948, just four hours and 45 minutes before a ceasefire takes effect, Captain Yehuda Berger instructs four volunteers - James Finnegan, an Irish former British policeman (who fell in love with a Jewish woman named Miriam Miszrahi); Allan Goodman, a tourist from the USA who fell in love with the struggle to found Israel; David Airan; and (at her insistence) Esther Hadassi (a Yemeni Jewish woman) - to take and hold the strategic "Hill 24", one of a number of hills dominating the highway into Jerusalem.

Afterward, Finnegan relates how he first met Berger in 1946, two years before the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, while serving as a British policeman in Haifa.

In a flashback, Finnegan is part of the police force rounding up Jews who came ashore in British-controlled Mandatory Palestine illegally at night.

Berger is a concentration camp survivor who arrived in Palestine illegally during the British Mandate period and joined the Jewish Brigade group to help other Jews make Aliyah Bet.

Miriam, a fourth generation local resident studying to be a teacher, is taken in for questioning and detained under the Emergency Defence Regulations.