Jerusalem ? Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails began a hunger strike Sunday for better conditions, but Israel’s internal security minister rejected their demands, saying the changes they want would make it easier for jailed militants to organize attacks on Israelis.

Palestinian and Israeli officials said more than 1,500 prisoners in three jails stopped eating and were taking only fluids Sunday in the first phase of the strike, which is expected to extend to other prisons and army detention facilities later this week.

More than 7,500 Palestinians are jailed by Israel, hailed by their people as heroes of resistance to Israeli occupation.

Their release has been a central Palestinian demand in negotiations with the Israelis, and Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Sunday that any progress toward peace depended on resolving “this central and sensitive issue.”

A statement by the Palestinian Prisoners Society declared “an open hunger strike” and accused Israel of “robbing us of all our rights, trampling our dignity and treating us like animals.”

In a long list of demands submitted to the Israeli authorities, the prisoners requested telephones, longer and more frequent visits by relatives, removal of glass partitions between prisoners and visitors, a halt to strip searches and freer movement inside the jails.

The prisoners described many of the demands as a restoration of previous arrangements in the prisons. However, Israeli Minister of Internal Security Tzahi Hanegbi said the prisoners’ demands were really meant to make it easier for them to contact militants outside jail and organize attacks on Israelis.

He said prisoners smuggled hundreds of cellular phones into jails in the past year and that the phones are used to plan “more terrorist attacks and more acts of murder.”

“The battle is over the telephone,” Hanegbi told Israel Radio. “No price will persuade us to grant them the contact that leads to attacks.”

Hanegbi said that in keeping with Israeli law, prisoners weakened by the hunger strike would be force-fed if necessary to keep them alive.

However the minister had a tougher message in a news conference Friday. “As far as I’m concerned they can strike a day, a month — until death,” he said. “We will repel this strike as if it never happened.”