It’s 7:30 p.m. this Thursday, an hour before kickoff of the Euroleague match between Paris Baskeball and Maccabi Tel Aviv. The radios of the imposing police crackle. A suspicious object is found on the first floor of the Adidas Arena in the north of the capital. The Paris Prefecture’s mine clearance service, which had already combed the room during the day, was called urgently. For a few minutes, the entrances and exits to the Arena are blocked. False alarm.
All around meanwhile, the flashing lights of dozens of police cars light up the night. Like that of the players a few minutes earlier, the two buses of supporters of the Israeli club identified with their yellow jerseys are escorted to the parking lot under the hall to avoid any contact with the outside world.
Despite the attempted warming in the Middle East and the truce signed between Israel and Hamas, the evening promised to be tense. Its start took place calmly, with the kick-off having been given as planned at 8:30 p.m.
It must be said that never in France has a Basketball match been as protected as this one. “I confirm it to you,” slips a police officer under his helmet. I have already protected football matches too often. Never this sport.” Classified at 4 on a risk scale of 5 by the national division for the fight against hooliganism (DNLH), it mobilized up to a thousand heavily armed police officers and deployed to the nearest metro entrances. “I live in the neighborhood which can sometimes be difficult,” Thomas laughs when he sees the device, “and frankly, I feel a lot safer than usual. Maccabi needs to come back more often.”
This Maccabi Tel-Aviv is not a club like any other. The “nation club” as Israelis call it is the most famous and representative club of sport in the Jewish state. The fear of the Paris police headquarters this Thursday is an unauthorized demonstration, this match being “likely to constitute a privileged and symbolic target for acts of a terrorist nature”, in a “current context of very high threat”, explained- she in a stop the day before.
The risk is all the greater because a few hundred meters away, at Stalingrad Square, a pro-Palestinian rally to welcome the ceasefire agreement is taking place at the same time. But he did not parade to the edges of the Adidas Arena.
Inside the room, movement in the room is limited to avoid any political demonstration. The searches at the entrance are also more careful than usual to avoid in particular the presence of Palestinian flags. The only ones allowed are those with the Star of David, many of them, the blue-white-red tricolors or those of Paris Basketball.
The match is progressing normally. Except for one detail: the Adidas Arena is one third empty. If security may have dissuaded the demonstrations, the unprecedented tension around this match unlike any other dissuaded part of the public from coming.
