One of the three hurt in Qalandiya, Mustafa Alsan, 20, was fighting for his life in an Israeli hospital Friday afternoon after being shot in the head.

“It’s to be expected that there will be some more friction on the ground,” Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, said.

“The mission is ongoing. It is a substantial mission, the most substantial mission in Judea and Samaria since 2002,” Colonel Lerner said, using the biblical names for the West Bank. “But it is the most substantial terrorist attack in Judea and Samaria also in recent years. People can’t expect to just hijack little boys on their way home from school and we won’t do anything about it.”

The three teenagers — Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Fraenkel, who is also 16 and is a citizen of both Israel and the United States — were last heard from on June 12 around 10 p.m. as they hitchhiked home from their yeshivas in West Bank settlements. One of the teenagers called a police hotline and whispered, “I’ve been kidnapped,” but the authorities thought it was a crank call and did not begin their search for hours.

Tension was mounting not only between Israeli troops and Palestinian residents, but also between the Palestinian factions whose April reconciliation pact paved the way for a consensus government that was sworn in June 2. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority has condemned the kidnappers and pledged not to let the situation descend into an intifada, or uprising, prompting harsh criticism from his Hamas partners.

“We are capable of igniting a third intifada, and no one will be able to prevent this right of ours once the pressure on the Palestinian people mounts,” Salah al-Bardaweel, a prominent Hamas leader in Gaza, said on Thursday. “We will not stand idly by in the face of the crimes of the occupation in the West Bank.”