How can I conditionaly remove the default behavior of an anchor (a) tag added by insertAdjacentHTML

I am trying to add an anchor tag that should redirect the user to another page only if a condition is met (here if array.length<3). I have followed Iananswer of this SO question, but in my case I am inserting the a tag using a function and insertAdjacentHTML as described below. The other thing is that I need to pass a parameter (the array itself) to check its length. I could not get it to work
the first snippet is form Ian answer which works perfectly. The second is another way of doing it using a div and the third one is the one I am breaking my head overbut can’t find the proper way of writing it.

<a onclick='return handleClick()' href="https://www.example.com">click</a>

<div class="check-div" id="check-div" style="cursor:pointer;">click</div>

<div class="elem1"> I am elem1</div>

//snippet 1

let checkDiv = document.querySelector('.check-div')

let array = ['1', '2', '3']

const handleClick = () =>{
    // return false
    if(array.length <= 3){
        location.href = 'https://www.example.com'
    }else{
        alert('Maximum 3 items to be compared')
        return false
    }
}

//snippet 2

checkDiv.addEventListener('click', ()=>{
    if(array.length <= 3){
        location.href = 'https://www.example.com'
    }else{
        alert('Maximum 3 items to be compared')
    }

})

//snippet 3

function addElements(elem){
    let elem1 = document.querySelector('.elem1')
    elem1.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend',`<a class='atag' onclick="ps_block_user(elem)" href="./compare-products/" target="_blank">cliquez pour comparer</a>`)
}

function ps_block_user(elem){
    if(elem.length>3){
        alert('Un maximum de 3 produits à comparer est possible!')
        return false
    }
}

addElements(array)

I also tried using an click event listener as below but here still we can’t prevent redirection as oppposed to the first snippet..

let atag = document.querySelector('.atag')
atag.addEventListener('click', ()=>{
    if(array.length>2){
        // return false
        alert('Un maximum de 2 produits à comparer est possible!')
        return false
    }
})