Having looked at the discussion thus has generated, I have a counterproposal to make.
First of all, given that full support for hyperlinks requires support for seven attributes (href, target, ping, rel, media, hreflang, & type), I can fully understand web developers not wanting to make it something applicable to any element. On the other hand, web authors have already indicated a desire through how they use <a> with exist tag soup browsers to have hyperlink support for more than just phrasing content as supported by <a> and embedded content as supported by <area> for <img> and <object>. What about adding a third non-metadata hyperlink element, say <anchor>, which would be a flow content element with flow content allowed in it? This would seem to cover the use cases presented, while preserving <a> as being phrasing content only. The only issue I see if this were added, is whether it would be better to have the ismap attribute of <img> only work with <a> or to have it work with the new element as well.
