Mariam Abu Amra’s six children panic when the sun goes down.

They are afraid of the dark, and ever since the war in the Gaza Strip began, their home is pitch-black by bedtime. The neighborhood outside is dark, too, illuminated only by cellphone screens that use precious battery life.

The power has been out for more than one year in Gaza, and residents have had to make do with alternatives that fall far short of their basic needs.

“Every night is a struggle for us,” said Abu Amra, 36, who lives in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza. “Sometimes my children ask me when the electricity will be back again, but I have no answer.”

Electricity is a fundamental building block of modern life, and Gaza has had very little of it since Israel took measures to cut off its supply in the first days of the war in what it said was an effort to weaken Hamas. That year-long blackout undergirds almost every deprivation imposed by the war and has turned bare necessities — from functioning medical equipment to bedroom nightlights — into luxuries.

“I never knew how much all the people and the families here, including myself, relied on electricity,” said Abu Amra, who now cooks over a fire and does laundry by hand before the sun sets. “I have to wake up early now so I don’t miss a single minute of daylight.”

Before the war, years of conflict and an Israeli and Egyptian economic blockade imposed to weaken Hamas had left Gaza’s electrical grid able to provide only limited hours of power each day.

Cutting off Gaza’s access to Israeli electricity was one of the first things Israeli authorities did after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

Some Palestinians have been able to turn to generators or solar power, but Israel severely has restricted the ability to bring new solar panels or the fuel to run generators into the territory, arguing that Hamas has stockpiled fuel intended for civilians to use for rocket attacks.

Those measures have remained in place throughout the war, even where some of the territory’s few functioning power lines still connect Israel’s electric grid to critical Gaza infrastructure, including a major water desalination plant that sits idle.

“In some cases, the power lines are live; they just need to turn them on, and that is a political decision,” said Georgios Petropoulos, an official with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Gaza. “A lot of these issues are not technical or supply problems anymore — they are political issues.”

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, humanitarian groups have criticized the decision to cut off Gaza’s power. In response, Israel Katz, who served as energy minister at the time and was appointed defense minister this past week, implicitly put the blame on Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza for holding hostages abducted during their attack.

“Humanitarian aid to Gaza?” Katz said after the attacks last fall. “No electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home.”

Israel has allowed some aid into Gaza after an international outcry, but last month, the Biden administration warned Israel that if it did not allow more humanitarian supplies into Gaza that could trigger a cutoff of U.S. military aid.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the branch of Israel’s Defense Ministry that manages affairs in the West Bank and Gaza, said it “actively facilitates the entry and transport of fuel to humanitarian facilities, including hospitals, bakeries and other essential infrastructure.” It said the military had permitted about 8 million gallons of fuel to enter Gaza since the war began, as well as 50 solar panels in the past few months. Israel’s Energy Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

Aid groups say far more is needed to restore electricity and address the territory’s humanitarian crisis.

The blackout has prompted hospitals to plead repeatedly for fuel to run their generators, while electrical current flows freely in Israeli towns a few miles away.

Alaa al-Din Abu Odeh, director of engineering and maintenance at the Gaza Health Ministry, said the territory’s hospitals were “running on God’s kindness and mercy.”