Vigilant Israelis Are Determined to Have Their Holiday

Jostled by a crush of customers at a vegetable seller’s stall, Chana Cohen wavered over which gnarled clump of horseradish to choose for her Passover “bitter herbs” -- just as she had hesitated over whether to come to the crowded open-air souk to do her holiday shopping.

What is traditionally one of the Jewish year’s most joyous occasions -- the eight-day celebration of Passover, which begins tonight at sundown -- is shadowed by a sense of foreboding.

Holidays in Israel are always times of intensified precautions against terror attacks, but this year, the anxiety is heightened by fear of reprisals from Palestinian militant groups for Israel’s assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas.

Israelis’ daily routines were laced with Passover preparations as the holiday approached. In religiously observant households, women threw themselves into an exhaustive campaign of cleaning to rid their homes of any crumb of leavened food. People readied themselves for family feasts, jamming tiny specialty shops and wide-aisled supermarkets to gather ingredients for Passover dishes that reflect the customs of the country’s smorgasbord of immigrant groups.

But anxiety was never far beneath the surface. Israeli police urged every synagogue to hire an armed guard or make sure one of the congregants carried a weapon. Hotels holding Passover seders were ordered to hire security guards. Shoppers like Cohen, buying her fresh meat and vegetables at Tel Aviv’s sprawling Karmel market, knew they might be running a risk.

“We just have to trust that everything will be all right,” she said, shaking her head.

The start of the holiday falls two weeks after Yassin was killed by a helicopter missile strike, and nearly everyone had expected that by now, one of the Palestinian armed factions would have carried out a suicide attack in retaliation.

Israelis wonder whether the lull can be attributed to the extremely tight security around the country or that the militant groups are merely lying low and marshaling their efforts to stage a “mega-attack.” Israeli authorities believe the calm can be credited to vigilant security and their near-total lockdown of the Palestinian territories. Since the killing of Yassin, movement from the West Bank and Gaza Strip has been highly restricted.

Although the holiday commemorates a triumph over adversity -- the Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt -- Israelis cannot help associating Passover with one of the most searing moments of the 3 1/2-year Palestinian uprising.

Two years ago, a suicide bomber struck a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya, turning a banquet hall to a scene of carnage. Twenty-nine people were killed and more than 140 wounded. Young children and elderly Holocaust survivors were among the casualties.

The seaside hotel, its main hall rebuilt after the blast, held a seder last year and was doing so this year.

“Of course we must continue, because we are living and want to continue to live,” said hotel spokesman Rina Hamami, whose 7-year-old son was injured in the explosion in 2002. “This is what we must do to go on.”

In part because of the frenetic pace of life here, the two weeks since the Hamas spiritual leader was killed already feels like a long time to most Israelis. The “Yassin effect,” which emptied buses and cafes in the days after the airstrike, has already faded -- although it has not completely disappeared.

“Yes, I feel 100% that we are a target,” said Aryeh Levy, a produce vendor in the Karmel market. “And yes, it’s crowded, but the crowd is much smaller than it should be.... I feel this isn’t a real Passover.”

In her light-filled Tel Aviv apartment, Ofra Bar-Tzlil arranged long-stemmed mauve lilies in a vase and pored over her cookbooks, choosing recipes for her family seder.

“Arranging flowers is better than thinking of the situation!” she said. But her husband, Shimon, said it was hard to escape the tension.

“We are waiting for the other shoe to fall -- we aren’t fooling ourselves,” he said.

Heading into the holiday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fought off another outburst of opposition from hard-liners in his Cabinet over his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials said the discussions escalated into a shouting match between Sharon and members of his coalition who believe the pullout would amount to a surrender to groups like Hamas.

Just after the holiday’s end, Sharon is to travel to the United States for talks on April 14 with President Bush -- a meeting he hopes will help shore up support for his Gaza initiative.

Israeli forces have continued to harry Hamas wherever they can. A fugitive belonging to the group’s military wing was killed Sunday on the outskirts of the Tulkarm refugee camp in the northern West Bank, the army said. Over the weekend, an Israeli sweep in Nablus netted more than two dozen Hamas members, officials said, virtually its entire local leadership.