Political Speech

The opening sentence below from an AP article today got me thinking about political speech. “Cease-fire” doesn’t mean what I would think it means if the countries have been shooting at each other all week and the cease-fire is still considered to be in place.

Hamas militants bombarded a major southern Israeli city with rocket fire Friday, unleashing their most powerful weapons yet in a week of tit-for-tat fighting that THREATENS TO DESTROY a five-month-old cease-fire [emphasis added].

I suppose the point is that it is “rogue elements” who are fighting and the agreement is between the goverments, but the wording still strikes me as odd.