Los Angeles Times · Los Angeles, CA · 19 November 2003
CP-2003-028
Bethlehem Under Blockade as Israel Hunts for Gunman
One of two soldiers slain at a checkpoint was on the phone with his mother when killed. Al Aqsa group reportedly claims responsibility.
By LAURA KING / Times Staff Writer
Transcribed from the clipping
JERUSALEM — Israeli troops blockaded the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem on Tuesday after a Palestinian gunman carrying an assault rifle that was wrapped in a prayer rug cut down two Israeli soldiers manning a checkpoint on its outskirts.
The shooting, on the edge of the Palestinian village of El Khader, rekindled debate in Israeli military circles about the dangers faced by Israeli troops who patrol remote West Bank villages or stand guard at ambush-prone roadblocks.
Israeli authorities said the slain soldiers were a 23-year-old sergeant major and a 20-year-old staff sergeant. [...] "Before, we allowed traffic inside the city and outside it, we allowed merchants to leave the city and tourists to enter it, we allowed civilians to leave," said Col. Gadi Eisenkot, the army's West Bank commander.
"But in view of this incident ... the life of the residents will become harder than it was before this morning," he said.
How this transcription was made
Date confirmed on the page (folio). Filed under the archive’s spelling; the page prints “The Los Angeles Times”. Legibility partial; any passage that could not be read is omitted rather than reconstructed.
Context added by this archive
Folio line reads "THE WORLD | LOS ANGELES TIMES | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2003 A9" — masthead agrees with Maria's label, and Nov 19 1903 would not be a Wednesday, so the year is sound. The page also carries a Macy's advertisement across the lower right, excluded here.
Named individuals in the story (the two soldiers) are serving military, not ordinary civilians, and are unnamed in the text.
Cite this clipping
"Bethlehem Under Blockade as Israel Hunts for Gunman," Los Angeles Times, 19 November 2003, p. A9. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2003-028. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2003-028
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2003-028.
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