Route 181 is the epic record of a road trip undertaken in the summer of 2002 by two filmmakers, one Palestinian and one Israeli, along sections of what had been designated as the border between Israel and Palestine by U.N. Resolution 181 in 1947. This border never actually existed since Israel’s victory in the warfare following the end of British control greatly expanded the new nation’s territory. The path taken by the filmmakers, now a virtual and historical one, with no official designation, reveals at times a no-man’s land, at others a space tense with occupying forces and their resisters. Tracing this route reveals the ways Israel has expanded since 1948 as well as the deepening and widening divide between the Arabs and the Jews who live in the contested territory. Above all, the film suggests, it is Israel’s expansion that sustains and widens this rift.