His name was Captain Islam. In some alternative reality, he might be the next Marvel Comics super hero. But, for scores of journalists, he was the Egyptian gatekeeper between us and the Gaza Strip.

For weeks, reporters waited with increasing frustration for Israeli officials to abide by their Supreme Court and allow reporters into the Gaza Strip to cover their devastating military campaign.

From the start, it was clear that Israel had no intention of allowing journalists into Gaza to see what their military was doing.

So a few reporters piled aboard the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza movement boats that tried to sail from Cyprus to Gaza.

The Israeli Navy rammed the first boat and sent it limping onto Lebanon.

The second Free Gaza boat turned back after the Israeli Navy fired warning shots and threatened to take more aggressive steps to prevent the boat from reaching Gaza.

So journalists turned their focus to Egypt.

For days, Egypt had been allowing aid and ambulances into Gaza from Rafah, a gritty desert town cut in two by the Gaza-Egypt border. But, like Israel, Egypt refused to let reporters enter Gaza.

Eventually, enterprising journalists figured out how to navigate the Egyptian bureaucracy and get into Gaza.

For American reporters, it meant going to the U.S. embassy and signing an affidavit that basically cleared the U.S. of any responsibility for you in Gaza and getting a letter from the Egyptian press office.

But getting in wasn’t quite that simple.

The rules at the Rafah border seemed to mutate. After the first few reporters rushed across into Gaza in the final days of the war, Egypt shut the borders when dozens of journalists turned up to try and get in.

Reporters paced along the border for hours as aid trucks and ambulances rolled through the Rafah border crossing.

Just when it seemed like there was no chance of getting in, Egyptian border guards would open the gates and let the reporters come rushing in.

McClatchy’s Shashank Bengali was among an early group of reporters to get in through Rafah on Sunday.

I followed close behind.

Normally, getting to Gaza is a 50-minute drive from Jerusalem to Israel’s Erez terminal, followed by a brief stop at Israeli passport control, a walk through the high-security Israeli terminal and into the demolished Palestinian side. From there it’s a 20-minute drive to Gaza City.

This time, it took 48 hours to get into Gaza.

First it was an hour drive to the Israel-Jordan border, followed by a long wait at the border crossing. Then it was an hour drive to the Amman airport to catch a 90-minute flight to Cairo to pick up the requisite paperwork. Once the paperwork was in hand, it was another five hour drive from Cairo to the Rafah border.

But by the time I arrived in Rafah on Tuesday night, it appeared that the rules had once again changed.

When I turned up, dozens of reporters had been idling on the border for two days. And the man standing between us and Gaza was Captain Islam.

Captain Islam was young, friendly and spoke great English. Hour after hour, he patiently listened to impassioned appeals from journalists. He was like a border therapist who calmly listened to every gripe and offered calming words of assurances.

He claimed, probably rightly, that, if it were his decision, he would let all the reporters in. But, in reality, he was just the gatekeeper, and the decisions were being made by Egyptian intelligence. And Egyptian intelligence was telling Western reporters that Israel was putting pressure on them not to let reporters into Gaza. That might have been true, or it could have been an excuse.

It didn’t matter either way to the reporters. Either way, journalists were still being kept out. When I turned up after dark on Tuesday, some friends were frantically trying every which way to persuade Captain Islam to let journalists in. Reporters were slowly losing hope.

While Barack Obama was delivering his historic speech, we were frantically speeding around trying to come up with the last-minute paperwork Captain Islam assured us would be our golden ticket to Gaza. Once we had the paperwork in hand, we rushed back to the border where Captain Islam sadly told us that the border was closed for the night. But he assured us that we would be able to get in first thing Wednesday morning. When we returned with our new paperwork, Captain Islam told us, sadly, that the rules had changed again, and that reporters were not going to get in. Period.

Scores of reporters from France, Croatia, Germany, Holland, Romania, England, Spain, Australia, and the United States drank sweet tea and waited. As the hours dragged on, reporter after reporter gave up and headed back to Cairo. Some were on the verge of tears.

Reporters began to interview each other about the standoff. A team of French rescue workers stood by the border in blue uniforms waiting for the OK to enter. Aid workers from Turkey and France mingled with the reporters. Reporters again called every possible source to try and convince Egypt to open up. Every time, the word came back: No go. Egypt wasn’t going to let more reporters into Gaza.

With hopes fading, I booked a flight back to Tel Aviv. Israel had begun letting a handful of reporters into Gaza every day. But it was still going to be days before my number was up in the mercurial lottery system established by the Foreign Press Association.

Then, when all hope seemed to be lost, the gates opened and the reporters stumbled over each other to get inside. Screaming matches broke out inside the terminal and the Egyptian authorities threatened to shut the whole process down if reporters didn’t calm down. After signing yet another piece of paper vowing to leave Gaza within a certain number of days, we were all allowed to cross into Gaza.

Waiting for us on the other side were the Hamas border guards in their black uniforms and beards. One of those standing watch was Ramzi, a 27-year-old border guard who pointed out the ceiling tiles knocked out of place by the Israeli bombing. Ramzi said he wasn’t Hamas, but he stood by the Hamas leaders who were democratically elected to lead the Palestinian Authority in 2006. Though Hamas had seized military control of Gaza in 2007, Ramzi thought the U.S. and Israel had pushed Hamas into a corner by refusing to work with the hard-line Islamist group that refuses to renounce its stated goal of destroying Israel.

While we waited in the terminal, the Gaza border guards stamped our passports with a specially-designed Palestinian Authority entry stamp — the first such stamp I’ve ever received for crossing into Gaza.

Then, after 26 days of trying to get in to cover the war, and three days after Hamas and Israel declared a cease-fire, we crossed into Gaza.

By Dion Nissenbaum