Making a touchpad without buttons like a normal touchpad with buttons

Assume a synaptics compatible mousepad that has no physical buttons, but where the whole surface is physically clickable (not a tap, but physically clickable). A particular touchpad with these features is the one found on Macbook Pro (BCM5974).

How, if possible, can this device be configured to act like a normal touchpad, with physical buttons?

+---------------------+
|                     |
|   Touch sensitive   |
|        area         |
|                     |
|                     |
|                     |
+----------+----------+ <- AreaBottomEdge, touchpad disabled under this line.
| Button 1 | Button 2 |
+----------+----------+

I can get the area of the touchpad below "AreaBottomEdge" disabled as touch sensitive simply by giving synclient this argument. The pad can still be clicked (again, not tapped) in this area though, which is what I want.

However, the problem is that click and drag doesn't work. Touching any two arbitrary points on the touchpad (even under AreaBottomEdge) simply doesn't move the cursor.

I've looked at the various options for synaptics, I've tried some of them, including LockedDrags, but it doesn't do what I want.

Can it be done? If not with synclient, then how?