The UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, on Friday condemned the shooting attack near the community of Dolev in the Binyamin region, in which 25-year-old Danny Gonen was murdered.

“On this second day of Ramadan and  at the start of the Shabbat, I call on all sides to exercise the utmost restraint, to maintain calm and promptly bring the perpetrators to justice,” he said in a statement.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said earlier on Friday evening that Israel will find the terrorist responsible for the shooting.

“The signs on the ground indicate that the shooting incident today near the community of Dolev was a terrorist attack. We are working to identify whoever carried out the attack,” Netanyahu said.

“We should not let the relative quiet deceive us,” he warned, adding, “The efforts to attack us continue constantly, just as we are operating constantly to prevent attacks with all the tools at our disposal.”

President Reuven Rivlin said the attack is “another step in the quiet and serious escalation in acts of terrorism we have witnessed in recent months.”

“We will not accept a situation in which a young hiker has his life taken from him in the land of Israel, because he is Jewish. Security forces will work tirelessly to bring to justice those responsible for this cruel and brutal act,” declared Rivlin.

Hamas, meanwhile, welcomed the attack and said it was “a unique and heroic operation”.

“Israel and its supporters delude themselves if they think the crimes against our people will continue without a response from the resistance,” said Hamas spokesman Husam Badran.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)