Since assuming control over the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Hamas terror group has been making it abundantly clear that their strategic goal remains the destruction of Israel.

Rockets continue to be fired at the Jewish state on a near-daily basis, and Palestinian terrorists persist in their efforts to carry out suicide bombings and other attacks.

Now, if all that weren’t enough, the new Palestinian Foreign Minister has declared that his government’s policy objective will be to replace Israel with a Palestinian state stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Speaking at his first meeting with his subordinates at the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said that Israel should not be recognized as a state and that the PA’s aim is to establish a Palestinian state in place of Israel.

This is nothing less than a blatant call to mass murder, and it is time for the international community to stop ignoring Hamas’ lethal intentions. Al-Zahar’s rhetoric should not be dismissed as mere words, if only because Hamas has shown in the past that it is dedicated to killing as many innocents as possible.

Israel must take action as soon as possible to remove Hamas from power and topple the PA. Failure to do so will only result in still more unnecessary violence and bloodshed.