THE winter storms that whip in from the Mediterranean bring new misery to Gaza. In districts flattened during last summer’s war with Israel, families huddle beneath plastic tarpaulins amid the rubble. When aid agencies arrive with supplies they scuffle for blankets. Those still with homes stay in bed to keep warm because there is little electricity. At the border passage to Israel, the sick and dying lie on stretchers for hours before the metal gates, seeking admission for treatment that their hospitals cannot provide for lack of medicines or equipment. The businesses that survived the bombardment are mostly idle because of Israel’s export restrictions, and Egypt’s closure of smuggling tunnels.

Gaza has been broken by three Israeli offensives in five years; eight years of economic blockade; one-party rule by Hamas, an armed Islamist group; and a distant Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who has largely forsaken the territory that he lost to Hamas in 2007. The rickety social system that somehow held Gaza together is falling apart.

A host of initiatives to release the chokehold have come to nothing. Last summer Ismail Haniyeh, the then Hamas prime minister, formally surrendered his bankrupt enclave to a “unity government” under Mr Abbas’s Palestinian Authority. But the power-sharing agreement left Hamas’s forces in charge of security, so Mr Abbas was always distrustful. He dithered over forwarding funds from Qatar to pay the salaries of Gaza’s civil servants. Those appointed by Hamas were told to step down and reapply for their jobs, subject to Fatah’s vetting

Hamas’s employees show up for work even though they have received only three partial salary payments in 18 months. “We won’t let Gaza collapse,” insists an officer manning Hamas’s passport-control office. But protests, often by unpaid workers, have increased threefold since September. On January 13th policemen stepped aside to let protesters burst into a cabinet meeting. “We spent our last shekels two months ago,” apologised one of Mr Abbas’s officials in Gaza, fending off protesters. Bombs explode next to cash machines.

Efforts to persuade Egypt’s strongman, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, to relax the border restrictions have also failed. A proposal to open the Rafah crossing for three days collapsed after militants in neighbouring Sinai killed an Egyptian border guard, in a campaign of jihadist violence that, Egyptian officials claim, is being fuelled in part by radicals in Gaza.

Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has proven similarly resistant to pressure. Last summer’s ceasefire has not lived up to the promise that the blockade would be lifted and billions of dollars provided for reconstruction. Israel broke off negotiations on re-opening the borders; Hamas has nothing to show but destruction and 2,100 dead for its recourse to guns and rockets. Last month Israel let in a tenth of the amount of cement the UN says Gaza needs daily to rebuild; even so, the Palestinians lack the money to buy it.

Hamas’s once-sober security forces behave more erratically. Hamas’s military arm, the Qassam Brigades, intermittently stages brazen armed parades, replete with locally manufactured drones. Hamas banned rallies by Mr Abbas’s Fatah movement to mark its 50th anniversary, stripping organisers down to their underpants. Fatah leaders woke up early one morning recently to the sound of bombs detonating at the gates of their villas, and the few ministers still in Gaza have received death threats on their mobile phones.

Gaza’s children dream of escape. At weekends, their parents take them to visit from afar the sole crossing to Israel. “Daddy, why don’t we become Christian?” asks Walid, an eight-year-old boy, after hearing that Israel let his Christian classmates visit Bethlehem for Christmas. In recent months Israel has arrested about 20 boys trying to clamber across the border. Real prison, says Walid’s father, might be better than life in the open jail of Gaza. And if shot? Well, he laughs, a quick death is better than the slow one on offer.