A senior Hamas leader called for a new "intifada" on Tuesday as thousands of people across the Gaza Strip protested against Israel's reopening of a 17th century synagogue in Jerusalem.

"There must be plans to confront these Zionist plans, to be carried out over the long term, and not temporary actions that quench the rage and then end," Hamas deputy politburo chief Mussa Abu Marzuk told Al-Jazeera television.

"The intifada (uprising) must enjoy the participation of all of Palestinian society," he said via telephone from his base in Damascus. "Every Palestinian should rise up... against the forces of the (Israeli) occupation."

Thousands of people, mostly students, took to the streets across Hamas-ruled Gaza to protest the opening of the synagogue and recent Israeli settlement expansions in the Holy City, where Palestinian rioters battled Israeli police.

"With our blood, with our souls, we sacrifice for you, Jerusalem," the crowds in Gaza shouted as they waved Palestinian flags and held up posters of the golden Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem's Old City.