Not only would it remove one of Syria's bargaining chips - its ability to deliver a peaceful south Lebanon - in its drive to regain its own Israeli-occupied land.
Six months ago, many of the young men of this town were throwing rocks at the police in what they called their version of the Palestinian uprising in the Israeli-occupied lands across the Jordan River.
Israel has ordered the word Nakba (referring to the 1948 forced Palestinian exodus from Israeli-occupied lands) to be removed from Israeli Arab textbooks.
The stabbing today, which wounded a Jewish rabbinical student, came almost three months into a Palestinian revolt fueled by a claim on Israeli-occupied land that the settlers and many other Israelis dispute.
Many residents say they have been promised a place in Israeli-occupied land by the occupation authorities, and want to go.
Israel has been widely blamed for the April 16 assassination of Abu Jihad, who was in charge of the P.L.O.'s efforts to direct the uprising in Israeli-occupied lands.
Because of totally different perspectives on the same two themes, however, news of the overthrow brought something like hope to many Palestinians in Israeli-occupied lands.
The King, whose country's population is some 80 percent Palestinian, was freed from the responsibility for the fate of the Palestinian people and their claim to Israeli-occupied land.
In Syria, the state-controlled news media today reiterated demands that any peace conference be held under United Nations auspices and address the return of Israeli-occupied lands.
The major objection of the P.L.O. is that the Jews are ending up in the Israeli-occupied lands.