Israel's reopening of historic synagogue angers Hamas

Several hundred people yesterday attended a state ceremony to mark the reopening of a landmark synagogue in Jerusalem's walled Old City, 62 years after it was destroyed in fighting with Jordan.

The rededication came against a backdrop of heightened political and religious tensions in the holy city, with thousands of police deployed after several weeks of clashes with Palestinian demonstrators.

The ceremony was slammed as "a falsification of history" by Khaled Meshaal, the exiled leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, who warned the move could cause the Middle East to "explode".

Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, placed at the entrance of the synagogue a mezuza - the parchment scroll inscribed with a verse from the Torah and placed in a case which Jewish families hang on door frames.

The ceremony was attended by Parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin, ministers and the chief rabbis of Israel.

It came as Israel barred men under the age of 50 and non-Muslims from entering Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound for a fourth day running after clashes between police and Palestinians in and around the site.

Mr Meshaal, the leader of Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip, denounced the ceremony.

"We warn against this action by the Zionist enemy to rebuild and dedicate the Hurva synagogue. It signifies the destruction of the Al-Aqsa mosque and the building of the temple," he said in Damascus.

Al-Aqsa and the rebuilt Hurva are around 700 metres apart in the Old City.

The Al-Aqsa compound is Islam's third holiest site after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. It is also Judaism's holiest site because it was the location of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

In his statement at a Damascus meeting of leaders of Palestinian groups, Mr Meshaal called the ceremony "a falsification of history and Jerusalem's religious and historic monuments.

"Israel is playing with fire and touching off the first spark to make the region explode," he said.

The exiled Hamas leader urged Palestinians in Gaza and in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to "launch a campaign to protect Jerusalem and Islamic and Christian holy sites there".

The synagogue was first built in 1694 and destroyed 21 years later by Ottoman authorities who held power at the time.

The site lay empty for many years and acquired the name Hurva, Hebrew for ruin, before being rebuilt in 1864 and becoming a centre for the Jewish community in the Holy Land.