Ajami is an area of Tel Aviv in Israel where Arabs, Palestinians, Jews and Christians live together in a tense atmosphere. Omar, an Israeli Arab, struggles to save his family from a gang of extortionists. He also courts a beautiful Christian girl: Hadir. Malek, an illegal Palestinian worker, tries to collect enough money to pay for his mother's operation. Dando, an Israeli cop, does his utmost to find his missing brother who may have been killed by Palestinians.

The film deals with the issue of foreign workers in Israel and describes it in an original and comic way by presenting the behavior of a backward basketball team from the Arava - Hapoel Tzuf, whose players are refugees from Africa.