Barely a month on, the hollowness of the Israeli-Hezbollah cease-fire stands exposed: Hezbollah’s leader says his group will not disarm—essentially pledging to finish the job he started when Hezbollah launched a war with Israel.

“No army in the world will be able to make us drop the weapons from our hands,” Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said last Friday at a “victory over Israel” rally, his first public appearance since the war began July 12.

The speech and the rally were fiercely defiant, demonstrating an utter lack of respect for the United Nations peacekeeping force and Lebanese Army now patrolling the area with a mandate to keep Hezbollah under control.

But is there any wonder Nasrallah is so bold and brash, after all he has achieved? There is literally no one to stop him. The New York Times described just how toothless the UN troops truly are:

They cannot set up checkpoints. They cannot search cars or homes or businesses. They cannot detain suspects. If they see a truck transporting missiles for example, they cannot stop it. And they cannot staff check points with the Lebanese Army because they do not know each other’s procedures. …”There’s a lot of misunderstanding what we are doing here,” said Stefano Cappellaro, a battalion commander with the Italian San Marco Regiment. …[O]fficials said that their most difficult task, and one they were adamant about achieving, was not getting drawn into any local power struggles between religious and political factions in Lebanon.

That is speaking, of course, of the “power struggles” between Hezbollah—which has rightly been called a “state within a state,” possessing its own, completely independent military—and the legitimate Lebanese government. The UN peacekeepers, by absolving themselves of any responsibility in those “power struggles,” guarantee that Hezbollah will continue to steamroller its way to greater strength. In the minds of many Lebanese, Hezbollah is the legitimate Lebanese government. The Times continued:

And so if there was any thought that the multinational forces would disarm or restrain Hezbollah, or search for hidden weapons caches, the commanders on the ground say very clearly that is not their job.

Nasrallah is keenly aware of that fact, and plans to take full advantage. In his speech, he said that Hezbollah, even after firing 4,000 rockets at Israel during its 34-day war, still possesses over 20,000 more, and vowed to never give them up.

It is now more clear than ever that Hezbollah suffered no punishment for starting a war, apart from the limited damage Israel managed to inflict before the UN stepped in and stopped it. In fact, surviving a month-long war against Israel elevated Hezbollah to legendary status among Muslims. Since the war, its position within Lebanon has only grown stronger. As the Trumpet said immediately after the war, “Make no mistake: Any notion the Hezbollah threat has been permanently eliminated is wishful thinking. … The fact that Israel agreed to this weak sham of a plan shows that it has stopped looking for a long-term solution to this problem. It is content with just buying time.”

Hezbollah’s announcement, at the same time it exposed the worthlessness of the UN force, proved this reality: that at this very moment Hezbollah and its sponsors in Syria and Iran are preparing for the next step in their effort to eliminate Israel. And no one is doing anything to prevent it.