Journalists on Wednesday worried that last week’s abduction of three Israeli teenagers risks triggering a full-blown conflict in the region. American, Israeli, and Fatah figures have all emphasized indications linking Hamas to the abductions.

Veteran Arab affairs journalist Avi Issacharoff on Wednesday conveyed sentiments that Gaza residents are preparing for a military conflict with the Jewish state in a Times of Israel article headlined “As IDF sweeps West Bank, Gaza residents prepare for war”:

Gaza residents are preparing for war after Israel accused Hamas of kidnapping three Israeli teens, sources in the coastal enclave told The Times of Israel Wednesday.

The population widely believes that the Hamas leadership was indeed involved in the abduction and that after Israel has finished dealing with the kidnapping saga, it will turn its attention to the Gaza Strip.

Attention this week is turning to a May speech given in Qatar by Khaled Meshaal, in which the Hamas political chief read out a letter from a Hamas prisoner. Senior Israeli security sources have indicated that Hamas cells in the West Bank may have interpreted Meshaal’s speech as a call to kidnap Israelis:

Speaking on the sixth day of the IDF operation to retrieve the three youths abducted in the West Bank, one senior security source said he believed the kidnappers did not receive an official “operational order” to kidnap the Israelis.

“Based on my knowledge of them [Hamas in the West Bank], they do not receive such orders,” he said.

Instead, the source said, “they heard a speech by Mashaal at the end of May, in which he read out a letter,” sent by a Hamas prisoner speaking of his hardships.

After reading the letter, Mashaal said he is aware of the prisoners’ difficulties, adding that they will be solved by Izzadin Kassam, Hamas’s military wing. Hamas in Hebron likely interpreted that as a demand to “carry out an operation,” according to the source.

Meanwhile, militants in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip have for five consecutive nights launched rockets into Israel, raising concerns that the Iran-backed group is pulling Jerusalem into conflict. Sustained rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel was last seen ahead of the November 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense, during which time Israeli forces severely degraded Hamas’s command and control infrastructure and its arsenal.

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