Violent altercations over a parking spot aren’t unusual; here in Israel, someone was murdered in such a dispute in 2008, and many studies show that road rage can result in the victim either being killed or dying of a heart attack. This brief introduction is meant to put last Thursday’s murder of Gen. Hassan Mahmoud al-Shaikh by a relative of Syrian President Bashar Assad into proportion.

According to eyewitnesses, Al-Shaikh wouldn’t allow Suleiman Assad to pass him. But Assad finally managed to pass the officer and then block his way, and after a loud altercation, Assad took out a gun and shot the general in front of his wife and children.

There have been worse murders in Syria, and this one probably didn’t arouse much interest among the families of the approximately 250,000 victims of the country’s civil war. But for President Assad, the murder couldn’t have come at a worse time.

First, the victim was a volunteer commander of the National Defense Forces in Latakia, a bastion of support for the government whose residents are mostly members of Assad’s Alawite sect. The National Defense Forces, incidentally, is a euphemism for the Shabiha – gangs of armed thugs set up throughout the country, first to suppress anti-government demonstrations and then to fight the rebels alongside the Syrian army.

Second, the killer is the son of the president’s cousin, Hilal Assad, a former commander of the National Defense Forces in Latakia who was killed fighting the Al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front in 2013. He was succeeded by Suleiman Assad, who treated local residents like his own property – setting up checkpoints, harassing passersby and even killing anyone who displeased him. Since last Thursday’s murder, he has apparently fled to Lebanon.

The murder unsurprisingly sparked stormy protests, and not just in Latakia. Over the last two days, many volunteers with the National Defense Forces have deserted from their units, and some have even joined the rebels. This is a much bigger headache for President Assad than appeasing the victim’s family, which is demanding that the murderer be executed.

Following the murder, social media networks were flooded with recriminations, curses and threats between Alawites who support Assad and Alawites angry over the killing. One Facebook account published a cartoon of a cat looking into a mirror and seeing himself as a lion – which is what Assad means in Arabic.

Latakia is a district controlled by a few important families. The fact that a member of one of them has just been killed could thus set off a chain reaction that could end in a violent uprising in one of the few regions that is still mostly under government control.

Bashar Assad, who is aware of this threat, has recruited his sister Bushra – perhaps the only Assad family member who still has a good reputation – to try to calm the district. Bushra sent her son Basel to the victim’s family to try to end the crisis that could set the district on fire.

In normal times, it’s doubtful that any member of the Assad family would have bothered apologizing to the family of the murdered general. But with the rebel forces approaching the outskirts of Latakia and the Syrian army falling apart and suffering from a shortage of soldiers, Assad can’t afford to have any more soldiers or volunteers from this district desert, nor can he afford to give the Alawite community a reason to rebel against the government.

Reports by the rebel forces say the Free Syrian Army and Jaish al-Fatah, a coalition of Islamist groups, are close to capturing a base in Jourin that serves as a joint command for the Syrian army and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah. Jourin commands important arteries that lead to Latakia and Hama, and it seems the rebels have managed to put a large portion of the government forces there to flight.

Meanwhile, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, continues to advance through the rural parts of the Homs district with the goal of capturing the city of Homs itself.

Assad doesn’t have enough troops to block the rebel advances in both these districts, whose capture by the rebels could isolate Latakia. That is also why he is making renewed efforts, together with Iran and Russia, to produce a diplomatic initiative that would somehow turn the situation around.

But for now, the rebel forces, encouraged by their recent victories, don’t seem to have any interest in holding diplomatic negotiations. They believe they will succeed in taking over additional slices of Syria by the end of the summer, which would give them the upper hand militarily – and therefore diplomatically as well.