This article was first published in The New York Times 2006.

I awoke to the persistent stammering of my 2-year-old son Yousuf: “I think today the crossing will open, Mama!” Yousuf’s prediction came true. After we had waited at the border for over two weeks, Israel finally opened the border for a few hours.

Amid chaotic crowds of thousands of stranded travelers, my son and I managed to squeeze through Gaza’s Rafah Crossing from Egypt to reach our home in the Gaza Strip.

The hardships persist, however, for thousands of Palestinians on both the Egyptian and Gaza sides of the passage who were unable to cross during those fleeting hours. They now must wait until the Israeli government temporarily opens the border again.

The Rafah Crossing, the gateway to the world for 1.4 million Gazans, was shut by Israel in late June after Palestinians captured an Israeli soldier. It has been open only for a few days since.

When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the region in November, her visit coincided with the one- year anniversary of the Gaza Agreement on Movement and Access that she had brokered. The agreement aimed to facilitate the movement of Palestinian people and goods and to lead to Palestinian control over the Rafah Crossing after one year.

At the time, she proudly promised that it would “give the Palestinian people freedom to move, to trade, to live ordinary lives.”

The year has passed, and all our crossings, our air, our water and our lives remain under Israeli control.

Israel began violating its commitments immediately, well before Hamas’s election victory, refusing to allow supervised bus convoys between Gaza and the West Bank, or to speed the flow of vital goods in and out of Gaza.

Israel had also agreed not to close Rafah and other crossings in response to security incidents unrelated to the crossing itself. For example, according to the agreement, Palestinian rocket fire into Israel does not constitute a valid reason for closing Rafah.

So why close Rafah? Countering Israeli accusations, senior European diplomats told both Israel’s Jerusalem Post and Ynet News that there have been no major Palestinian violations of the agreement, and that weapons are not smuggled through the crossing. The European Union has monitors stationed at the crossing pursuant to the border agreement.

An Israeli military document leaked to the Israeli daily Haaretz in August suggested that the closure was in fact calculated. It’s purpose was to “apply pressure” on Gaza’s residents to return the captured Israeli soldier. This action, says the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, constitutes collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population.

But instead of holding Israel accountable, Rice praised Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel for taking steps likely to “advance the peace processes in the region.”

We wait day after day in the Egyptian town of Arish, when suddenly a rumor spreads that the crossing is about to open. We rush there along with thousands of other stranded Palestinians.

We waited for seven hours two days in a row, languishing in limbo, only to learn that the Israelis have closed the crossing again after a single hour. We stand in the sun packed together like cattle, penned in between steel barriers on one end and Egyptian riot police on the other.

“We’ve been waiting for 15 days. Only God knows when it will open — today, tomorrow, the day after?” 58- year-old Abu Yousuf Barghut tells me.

His wife weeps silently by his side. “We went to seek treatment for him. My four children are waiting for me in Gaza. We just want to return home now, that’s all.”

Nearby, a group of people try to comfort a young girl with muscular dystrophy, screaming uncontrollably in her wheelchair.

Providing Palestinians with their most basic rights — the right to move freely in and out of their own land — is critical to furthering peace and ensuring a viable Palestinian state.

Yet the world has remained relatively silent — even complicit — as Gaza has been turned into a prison.

Neither Israel, the U.S. government nor the rest of the world can imprison 1.4 million Palestinians and expect that somehow, some way, their “problem” will disappear.

We certainly aren’t going anywhere.

*Laila M. el-Haddad is a Palestinian journalist, mother and blogger who divides her time between Gaza and the United States