Plot
After the Second World War, Katherine "Kitty" Fremont, a widowed American nurse, is sightseeing in Cyprus following a tour of duty for the U.S. Public Health Service in Greece. Her guide mentions the Karaolos internment camp on Cyprus, where thousands of Jews — many Holocaust survivors — are being detained. The British refuse them passage to Palestine. British General Sutherland, who knew her late husband, suggests Kitty volunteer at the internment camp. Feeling uncomfortable around Jews, she initially refuses but reconsiders.
At Karaolos, Kitty grows fond of Karen Hansen Clement, a Danish-Jewish teenager she meets in the camp, and offers to take her to America, but Karen declines. Her mother and siblings were Holocaust victims, and she is searching for her missing father while promoting the Zionist cause.
When Haganah rebel Ari Ben Canaan, a wartime captain in the British Army's Jewish Brigade, smuggles 611 Jews aboard a cargo ship for an illegal voyage to Palestine, military authorities blockade Famagusta harbor to prevent the ship's departure. Karen is among the Karaolos internees aboard the ship bound for Palestine. When Kitty learns Karen is aboard the ship, she uses her influence with Sutherland to be permitted to board to ensure Karen and other refugees boarded voluntarily. Karen confirms she has boarded voluntarily. The refugees stage a hunger strike, and Ari threatens to blow them up with the ship if not permitted to sail. When Kitty volunteers to stay onboard to provide medical services, Ari insists she must join the hunger strike. Eventually, the British permit the ship, renamed Exodus, to sail.
As opposition to partitioning Palestine into Arab and Jewish states intensifies, Karen's beau, Dov Landau, joins the Irgun, a radical pro-Zionist militant group led by Akiva Ben Canaan, Ari's uncle. Akiva interrogates Dov, who confesses to being a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz, where he learned dynamiting skills. Akiva's violent activities run counter to his brother Barak, Ari's father, who heads the mainstream Jewish Agency, working to create a Jewish state through political and diplomatic means. Barak fears the Irgun will derail these efforts.
Karen relocates to Gan Dafna, a Jewish kibbutz near Mount Tabor, close to the moshav where Ari was raised. Kitty and Ari fall in love, but Kitty pulls back after meeting Ari's family and learning about his previous love. Dafna, who was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by Arabs, is the namesake of the Gan Dafna kibbutz. Ari helps locate Karen's father, Dr. Clement, now committed to a mental hospital in Jerusalem and in a dissociative state caused by the horrors he suffered in a Nazi concentration camp.
Akiva is imprisoned by the British in Acre fortress, and sentenced to hang after the Irgun bomb the King David Hotel. Ari plots an escape to free Akiva and Haganah and Irgun prisoners. Dov, who eluded capture, turns himself in to utilize his dynamiting expertise to facilitate the Acre Prison break. Hundreds of prisoners escape, and Akiva is fatally wounded in pursuit. Wounded, Ari makes it to Gan Dafna and is moved to Abu Yesha, an Arab village nearby where his lifelong Arab friend, Taha, is the mukhtar. Ari develops a life-threatening infection, and Kitty saves his life, rekindling their romance.
Dr. Lieberman is arrested by the British after they discover an illegal weapons cache hidden in the children's village. Taha warns Ari that Arab nationals plan to attack Gan Dafna and massacre the Jews. Ben Canaan orders the children evacuated as a detachment of Palmach troops arrives to reinforce Gan Dafna's defenses. Ecstatic over the prospect of the new nation, Karen visits Dov on night patrol at the Gan Dafna perimeter and proclaims her love for him. He vows they will marry after the war, but Karen is ambushed returning to Gan Dafna and murdered by Arabs. Taha's body is found hanging in Dov's village, killed by the Grand Mufti. A Star of David is carved into his body with a swastika and signs saying "Jude" are on village walls.
Karen and Taha are buried in one grave. Ari eulogizes them, saying that one day Jews and Arabs will peacefully share the land. Ari, Kitty, Dov, and a Palmach contingent board trucks to fight in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
