Palestinian writer Edward Said, now based in New York, embarks on a personal journey back to the country he and his family left in December 1947 - shortly before the state of Israel was declared the following year. As Israel celebrates its half-century, Said, who now suffers from leukaemia, revisits childhood haunts with his son and is shocked by the suffering of ordinary Palestinians and the sight of a group of Bedouin being forcibly displaced from their land. He also discusses Arab-Israeli relations with his close friend Daniel Barenboim, the pianist and conductor whose family migrated to Israel from Argentina in the early fifties.