'Yassin Effect' Ripples Throughout Israel

JERUSALEM — This is not the March madness Israel's fervent basketball fans had in mind.

Here was the country's top professional team, Maccabi Tel Aviv, riding a great season. Better still, they looked forward to playing in the European championship tournament -- known as the Final Four -- on their home court because it is Tel Aviv's turn to host.

But in another sign that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has left almost no realm of life unmolested, the team's fans find themselves fighting to keep the tournament on Israeli soil. It is one aspect of what media here have dubbed the "Yassin effect," the rippling byproducts of the military's assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin and the resultant vows by his militant Palestinian followers to retaliate.

Since Monday's missile attack on Yassin, the Israeli stock market, which had been on a roll, has dropped nearly 2%. Many skittish Israelis stayed away from the malls, crimping commerce during the shopping season for next month's Jewish Passover holiday. Tourism executives fret that visitors will stay away because of travel warnings, including one issued by the United States.

And Maccabi Tel Aviv's devoted fans are battling to keep the Final Four, which will begin in late April. They were stung when a Spanish team from Valencia chose not to board the plane for Thursday's game in Tel Aviv out of concern for security.

Officials of the Euroleague, the basketball federation, are to meet next week to decide whether to move the Final Four. Israeli officials, including Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, plan something of a full-court press to keep the tournament from being taken away.

"We're going to fend off any attempt to do that," ministry spokesman Jonathan Peled said.

Security remained tight around Israel by week's end, with soldiers and police out in force in some of the busiest commercial areas of Jerusalem, which has suffered 23 suicide bombings during the 3 1/2 -year intifada. Officials warned this week that the state of high alert might last for weeks.

Even in a place hardened to the possibility of sudden attack, the threats of massive retaliation by Hamas took a toll. Officials expressed concern that the effect on the economy could extend into April.

The stock market had yet to make up ground lost since Sunday, when the Tel Aviv 25 index hit its highest level since October 2000, at the beginning of the current uprising. Israeli media reported that overall business was down by half, puncturing the high hopes of many merchants for a brisk Passover shopping season.