JERUSALEM Matthias Ginter Dortmund Jersey , April 17 (Xinhua) -- A leader of a sweeping hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails was put in solitary confinement on Monday as Israel was seeking to break the protest, officials and local media said.


Assaf Librati, a spokesman for the Israel Prison Service, said the hunger strikers will be "disciplined."


He also said Marwan Barghouti, a high-profile Fatah-linked prisoner, was transferred from the Hadarim Prison in central Israel to the Kishon detention center in the north.


Barghouti is a leader of one of the largest protests in Israeli jails in recent years Mario Gotze Dortmund Jersey , where some 1,200 detainees in several prisons announced on Monday an indefinite hunger strike until Israel accepts their demands to improve incarceration conditions.


Dozens of other prisoners the Prison Service considers leaders of the protest were also transferred to other jails, according to local media.


Librati confirmed that the Prison Service "has started taking disciplinary measures against the strikers, and some prisoners have been transferred to separate wings."


"It is to be emphasized that the (prison service) does not negotiate with prisoners," he said.


Earlier on Monday, Barghouti Marco Reus Dortmund Jersey , who is seen by some as a potential successor to President Mahmoud Abbas, published an Op-Ed article in the New York Times.


Under the title "Why we are on hunger strike in Israel's prisons," Barghouti wrote that 50 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has proved that Israel has been using an "inhumane system" incarceration to break "the spirit of prisoners...by inflicting suffering on their bodies, separating them from their families and communities and using humiliating measures to compel subjugation."


"As part of Israel's effort to undermine the Palestinian struggle for freedom, an Israeli court sentenced me to five life sentences and 40 years in prison in a political show trial that was denounced by international observers," he wrote. "Israel has tried to brand us all as terrorists to legitimize its violations Marcel Schmelzer Dortmund Jersey , including mass arbitrary arrests, torture, punitive measures and severe restrictions."


He promised that the new hunger strike "will demonstrate once more that the prisoners' movement is the compass that guides our struggle, the struggle for Freedom and Dignity, the name we have chosen for this new step in our long walk to freedom."